Government of Oman, UNICEF launch #ForOmansChildren campaign to support positive parenting in the sultanate

Muscat, 27 October 2020 – The Government of Oman, with the support of UNICEF, today launched #ForOmansChildren, a campaign to support positive parenting in the Sultanate.

A short video explaining the campaign will appear on national television and be posted on the government’s and UNICEF’s social media channels.  

The campaign underpins the Oman National COVID-19 Parenting Risk Communication and Engagement (RCCE) Strategy developed to ensure parents, caregivers and other key groups have the necessary information to help them continue to combat COVID-19, protect their children and adjust to living with disease over the longer term.

The strategy acknowledges the disproportionate impact of the crisis on specific groups, including women and children, young people and adolescents, people with disabilities, and economically challenged groups.

“Protecting and promoting positive parenting is a well-established priority for the Sultanate of Oman” said Khalfan Harib Saif Al-Jabri, chairperson of the Government of Oman and UNICEF Programme Management Group. “The strategy recognises that the way families behave and cope with the demands of this COVID-19 crisis will be central to the continued good health, development and fulfilment of their children and the future of the country.”

“By focusing on the impact of the pandemic on children and their caregivers, this strategy supports multiple objectives and multiple gains,” said Liibaan Hussein Dahir, social policy manager at UNICEF Oman. “It strengthens national efforts to support families in their role of protecting and guiding  children and young people; it suggests inclusive ways of tackling the needs of children with disabilities, and of adolescents; it looks at the long-term secondary effects of the epidemic on overall health, wellbeing, and nutrition; and aims to safeguard national gains in these sectors.”

The RCCE strategy identifies eight audiences – including parents and caregivers, religious leaders and educators – as recipients of tailored information messages. To complement existing government efforts and focus on the secondary impacts of the crisis such as continuity of education, staying safe online, the return to classrooms, mental health and physical exercise, and stigma and discrimination.

Information will be disseminated via television, radio and newspapers; via social media channels including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and LinkedIn; and via engagement with community and religious leaders and health and education workers. UNICEF is also encouraging communities to engage and become involved through feedback channels such as hotlines.    

This RCCE strategy builds on  Oman’s initial rapid and overarching national response to the pandemic and its focus on priority at-risk groups. At the start of the outbreak, UNICEF supported the government in providing critical information relating to COVID-19 about topics including symptoms, handwashing and other hygiene practices,  physical spacing and social distancing, and quarantine and isolation guidelines. UNICEF has also worked with the government to dispell rumours and untruths. This RCCE stragegy also  supplements an earlier RCCE Strategy for COVID-19 focusing on expatriate labour workers developed at the request of the Ministry of Information (MoI) to address the situation of this high-risk and hard-to-reach group, which experience the most elevated numbers of cases.

UNICEF worked with the Government of Oman-UNICEF Programme Management Group (PMG) as well as its Social and Behavioural Change Communication (SBCC) task force comprised of officials from the Ministries of Education, Health and Social Development, the  National Centre for Statistics and Information, and the Ministry of Information to develop these strategies along with other UN partners including the World Health Organization and and UN Population Fund.