Don't subject children to ridicule or public shaming, Sharjah child safety body advises parents
Session seeks to raise awareness against subjecting children to emotional and sexual abuse
Sharjah: The Child Safety Department (CSD) of Sharjah recently organised a webinar in collaboration with the Emirates Child Protection Association to educate parents, teachers and child-care workers in the UAE on child safety issues and offer them key tools and resources to ensure the well-being of their children.
The session focused on children’s rights and shined a light on what child safety means as well as the types of abuses that children are at risk of facing today.
More than 265 parents, teachers and child-care professionals attended the webinar, which was presented by Mouza Al Shoumy, deputy head of Emirates Child Protection Association.
Al Shoumy lauded the efforts of the UAE Government in protecting children’s rights and safeguarding minors against abuse and exploitation. The session included a Unicef-approved exercise to differentiate between children’s rights and needs. Al Shoumy also heightened the UAE’s Wadeema Law, which was passed in 2016 and introduced six new articles to the UAE’s child protection laws to safeguard the fundamental rights and prohibit children’s exposure to any form of physical or psychological harm.
Practical tips
The audience was educated on the different types of abuses commonly faced by children — including emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
The webinar highlighted the fact that several commonly-practised ways of disciplining children by parents often lead to violating children’s rights. These violations can be in the form of negative criticism, neglect, ridicule or public shaming. Child rights experts participating in the webinar offered the attendees practical tips on ways to guide children without harming them physically or psychologically and without affecting their dignity and sense of self-esteem.
Al Shoumy noted that parental attention towards children was critical to their well-being as negligence could have grave consequences, including children accidentally falling to their deaths from balconies or windows, drowning in swimming pools or in the sea, suffering from domestic violence, suffocating in vehicles and being sexually abused.