The National Council for Childhood and Motherhood is toughening its stance on children's rights, reports Reem Leila The newly appointed secretary-general of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) Lamia Mohsen, a paediatrician at Cairo University, together with her accompanying team, laid out the issues facing the NCCM at a press conference on 13 April, saying that the council saw its role as working to improve children's rights and particularly to protect them against poverty, child labour, illegal migration, sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Mohsen, who succeeds former secretary-general Mushira Khattab in the job, has quit her Cairo University post to devote herself to her mission at the NCCM. Since its creation in the late 1980s, the council has been known for many ambitious plans, among them the Decade of the Child, which lasted for 20 years from 1990 to 2010, to working to give the children of Egyptian mothers and foreign fathers Egyptian nationality, something that was made law in 2008. Topping the NCCM's priorities today is combating child poverty, which, the organisation believes, will put an end to children skipping school as well as to the phenomenon of street children. According to Somaya El-Alfi, in charge of the council's development department, "the council will target 1,000 children in each governorate to support their families financially in order to prevent them skipping school. It also aims to provide such children with stationary, school bags and exercise books." The council intends to appoint 50 female guides, each responsible for 20 pupils, to help vulnerable schoolchildren study and to advise their families. These guides will report to a further five supervisors, who will report directly to the council on the programme's performance. "The idea is to encourage families to keep their children at school and not to send them to work in the fields or workshops," El-Alfi said. Over the next few weeks, the NCCM will be putting the finishing touches to its National Plan for Childhood, which will help to combat all forms of abuse of children. According to council statistics, children under 18 years of age make up 39 per cent of the country's population, and some at least of these may be tempted to try illegal emigration as a result of a perceived lack of opportunities in Egypt. According to Nasser Musallam, NCCM coordinator for illegal emigration, Egypt is now a main source country for illegal migrants to Italy. "Of the 2,281 irregular Egyptian migrants who arrived on the Italian coast in 2008, 41 per cent were aged between 15-18," Musallam said. There was a need to protect such migrants, Musallam said, adding that it was in everyone's interest "to try to prevent such young people from emigrating and qualifying them to work here in this country instead." Vocational schools will now be set up in several Egyptian governorates, among them Fayoum, Assiut, Menoufiya and Sharqiya, which are where many young people attempting to emigrate illegally originate from. "The council intends to set up one or more schools in each of these governorates, depending on population density, with the aim of decreasing illegal migration and training young people for various jobs," he said. The number of children living in low- income households is increasing, leading to poorer living conditions and greater deprivation, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in a recent report. Some 23 per cent of children under 15 in Egypt are living in poverty on less than $1 a day, the report said, with around five million children being deprived of appropriate housing, including shelter, water and proper sanitation, and 1.6 million children under five experiencing health and food deprivation. The poverty rate among children in rural areas was more than double that in urban areas, the report said, with a higher incidence in Upper Egypt, estimated at 45.3 per cent. Girls and boys were equally vulnerable to poverty and the deprivation of rights, but girls in rural areas were the least likely to attend school or complete their education, thus increasing the likelihood of being poor in adulthood as well, the report said. "Poverty is the main cause for children leaving school early, as well as early marriages for girls and illegal migration," Mohsen said. As part of its strategy, the NCCM has recently set up a reproductive health hotline, 16021, for young women seeking health advice. "This hotline, different from the 16000 hotline for children in need, is dedicated to combating underage marriage," Mohsen said. The hotline provides its services for free, with doctors, sociologists and psychologists providing advice to callers. More than 100 female guides have also been trained to deal with the issue, and these will work in all of Egypt's governorates, especially Giza and Qalioubiya. "We hope that over the next five years, 80 per cent of the illiteracy among children can be eliminated, as can 80 per cent of the current level of illegal migration. We also hope that early marriages among young girls will decrease by 45 per cent," Mohsen said.
