Khattab said the child law has been considered a “breakthrough,” and has repeatedly said that she aims to find a foster home for every orphan in Egypt and do away with orphanages which carry a social stigma and can never replace a family and a home.
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CAIRO: The Minister of the State for Family and Population Moshira Khattab announced this week changes to the Egyptian child law. She said that a number of changes include executive regulations of the Children’s Act 162 of 2008, which was recently approved by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif.
The minister said that under the new regulations, “protection of children from abduction and trafficking comes as a the top priority of the law by providing a number of procedures to be followed by medical facilities during the registration of children in birth certificates.”
Khattab continued to say that “under the strict measures, in addition to restricting the work of midwives to promote the birth by a doctor with a view to reducing deaths of newborns and mothers and to ensure that the child has his registered birth certificate and health card.”
The regulations stipulate the allocation of offices of health in all areas to enable mothers to register her child in the absence of a marriage contract, in which a four character name would be written in the father’s name item in the birth certificate, with no sign on the birth certificate highlighting that this name is not the real name of the real father of the child.
While this would be clarified to the registration office, at the same time, it has been given “the right to ensure the child to alternative families that do not carry the Egyptian nationality, as well as for widows, divorcees and never-been married,” the ministry said.
The regulations will enable a fostering family to give their name to the child and is guaranteed by a birth certificate, with the increase in subsidies for those families in the event of the marriage of the daughter.
Strict controls had been added to curb child labor, Khattab continued in her comments, such as the “withholding of child labor before the age of 15, and to guarantee that this work wouldn’t hinder his education and to ensure non-exploitation or causing any damage to the child, as well as to identify areas of training of children so as not to even make this training a back door to child labor, and regarding the criminal treatment, a new measure is applied to children in conflict with the law, and instructed to do so in one of the public works that would develop his character and maintain their dignity in him such as public libraries and the role of caring for elderly persons.”
The law has also given special attention to education, emphasizing the establishment of schools away from sources of environmental pollution, as well as providing places and times for the practice of educational activities, “with the application of active learning at all levels where also it would stress banning books that incite extremism and encourage corruption and anomalies in public libraries so the child cannot see them,” the minister continued.
The new law also gives special attention to the feeding of children and by disseminating awareness of the importance of breastfeeding, and controls on advertising products for artificial feeding.
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