Cameroon: Child Protection - National Policy Document Underway

Members of the National Commission for Childhood in Moral Danger, Delinquent or Abandoned yesterday, January 24, 2016 met during it's 2017 session to examine and validate a draft national policy document on the protection of children in Cameroon. While opening the session in the presence of other Cabinet Ministers, the Minister of Social Affairs, Pauline Iréne Nguene, reiterated the importance of the document as it falls within government's goal to protect the right of children. Experts explained that the social, cultural and economic evolution of the society has brought a change in the family and society with a disorganization of life styles and traditional systems of child care, education and protection. As such, the family and community milieu which were in the first place traditionally supposed to ensure the protection of children can no more meet the challenges of the time. With the government is not able to meet all the needs of child protection, children find themselves in a situation where they have to adopt defensive or protective mechanisms which materialise in behaviours that jeopardise their future, that of the community and the nation.

The National Policy Document for child protection identifies the shortcomings which hinder child protection and put forward strategic orientation to ensure the societal basis of child development by putting in place a system to make sure that every child benefits from a holistic protection for his/her development as well as that of the nation. While taking into consideration the problems of children, the Director of the Social Protection of Children at the Ministry of Social Affairs, Jean Pierre Edjoa, noted that the National Policy Document is out to ensure that child protection issues are fully taken into account in every aspect of the national life, promote a child protection friendly social and cultural environment, improve the legal and judicial frame work of child protection, improve the accessibility of child protection services as well as reinforcing governance in the implementation of child protection policy.

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