The United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), Kaduna Field Office, says it will work with the media and other institutions to create public awareness on child protection.
Dr Wilfred Mamah, the new child protection specialist with UNICEF, who took over from Mr Dennis Onoise made this known in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Kaduna.
Mamah, who commended the Kaduna State government for passing the child protection and welfare law 2018 said that their organisation would support the government toward implementing the child rights law.
“Some of the challenges we encounter in implementation of child rights law is what we call negative social norms; people grow up with certain behaviours and some of them don’t even know that it’s not right.
“To tackle those negative social norms we need to work with the journalists and other institutions for public awareness that will be working and supporting government in terms of creating awareness using all the structures on ground to make sure people know their right,” he said.
He noted that UNICEF would work hand in hand with Kaduna government to ensure that the issue of violence against children became a thing of the past as there would be a lot of advocacy on the matter.
According to him, the implementation of the child rights law requires the building of sustainable structures for implementation, one of which was the family court the government was planning to establish.
He added that other structures were the state child rights implementation committee, which was provided by the law and also the provision for local governments child rights implementation committee.
Mamah said that legal and policy framework, change of social norm, strengthening of social welfare system, justice sector and information management would be tackled to achieve a working child protection system in the state. (NAN)
