The third webinar in this series was conducted on February 25^th, 2021. The topic of the webinar was ‘System Approach to Child Protection’. Mr. Amer Habib, Team Leader- Child Protection Oxford Policy Management and Ms. Naima Iqbal Chohan, Head of Technical Excellence International Resource Committee Pakistan were the guest speakers and Ms. Khadija Khan, CEO PAFEC was the moderator of the webinar.

The webinar aimed at creating awareness about the definition of a child, his/her rights and the different forms of child exploitation and abuse, ways and means to protect them from all kinds of abuse, issues of child protection in Pakistan, the systems which can be made functional such as how to educate parents, teachers, caregivers, and other members of the society about their responsibilities so that they are able to intervene timely to protect children and rehabilitate them in case of abuse by providing them the required support and care. He also talked about Systems Vs Adhoc approaches to child protection and the laws and Child Acts being developed in Pakistan so far and the bottlenecks in the implementation of these laws.

Ms. Naima Iqbal Chohan, who was the second speaker of the webinar, talked about COVID-19 and child protection issues, the negative impact of the pandemic on the children especially during the lockdown because of the isolation, limited access to child protection services, uncertainty of the situation, fear of the virus and loss of livelihoods. She added that all this resulted into engagement of children in hazardous and exploitative labour endangering their lives and depriving them from their rights. She shared the findings of the Child Protection Monitoring carried out by IRC, the organisation where she is working. According to the findings of this monitoring she said, children’s emotional abuse was observed one of the common issues, followed by child marriages and sexual abuse. She also talked about the common stress signs in children and presented tips for parents, teachers and caregivers to provide care to children and to protect them in emergencies and otherwise. For further details, follow the link below:

Webinar Recording