child rights
Nine-year-old Adnan is short of breath. The oxygen he breathes through his nose does not feel sufficient. He gasps for air instead deteriorating into a fit of coughing.
Adnan suffers from bronchial allergies, which increase in severity in spring and autumn. His mother Nada Hatim explains that his condition requires regular treatment and monitoring.
Adnan’s family has to bear the cost of his medical treatments. Adnan has no health insurance coverage. His father, who is self-employed, has not bought a private sector health insurance policy for his son and family due to the expense.
Nada explains her son needs medical attention that requires frequent visits to the emergency room, often staying in the hospital for days at a time. “Staying in a private hospital for monitoring and treatment costs on average two to three hundred Jordanian Dinars (approximately $420) per sta,” she adds.
The need for childhood health insurance is not limited to Nada’s family. Most children in Jordan are not covered by basic public health insurance.
Children under the age of 18 constitute about a third of the population in Jordan. But most do not benefit from basic health insurance. Only children under the age of six are covered by comprehensive national health insurance.
According to Article (27) of the country’s “Civil Health Insurance Law”, Jordanian children under the age of six are covered by free public healthcare as long as the child does not benefit from private health insurance plans. Such free healthcare ends once the child reaches the age of six.
Since 2010, individual spending by Jordanians on healthcare has increased by around 40% and today represents around 21% of the country’s total expenditure on health. The latest statistics by the Ministry of Health indicate that citizens’ contributions towards their healthcare bill has risen by 30%.
For the past two decades Jordanian lawmakers have worked on a draft “Law on Child’s Rights”.
The new law, when passed, will mandate primary healthcare services and emergency treatment for free to all children in the country under eighteen years of age.
Source: The General Department of Statistics
In 1998, the first draft of the Law on Children’s Rights in Jordan was tabled only to be withdrawn in 2008 in order to align it with the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In April 2022, the Jordanian government approved the draft Law on Children’s Rights, and this is due to be submitted for review by parliament for any amendments required before approving or rejecting the new law.
Lawyer Issa Al-Hawawsheh clarifies that Article (13) of the draft “Law on Child’s Rights” mandates free primary health services must be provided to every child without discrimination due to gender, colour, race or other characteristics. “Once the program is launched, all children residing in Jordan would benefit from free healthcare services,” adds Al-Hawawsheh. He insists that providing health coverage for all categories of children will preserve their general health, prevent the spread of diseases and raise the overall society’s health levels.
Article (10):
A- A child has the right to access free primary health care services.
B- In emergency and life-threatening cases, health services are provided for free to children who do not have any other insurance plans.
C- The Ministry of Health shall develop and execute comprehensive policies and programs to improve children’s health conditions. It should also allocate sufficient resources to child health care services.
D- The Ministry of Health adopts the required procedures to implement the provision of Item (A) of this Article provided that the implementation process begins within a period not exceeding two years from the date of enforcement of the provisions of this law and shall be completed within a period not exceeding 10 years.
E- All issues regarding the implementation of the tasks and duties incumbent on the Ministry of Health shall be organized in line with the provisions of this article. Implementation stages and target groups and ages shall align with a law issued for this purpose.
Final passage of the law faces multiple obstacles. Many activists demand that the Law on Child’s Rights be reconciled to other laws such as the “Civil Status Law”, the “Juvenile Law” and the “Code of Criminal Procedure”, so that the new law does not conflict upon application with any other laws.
Dr. Fayez Basbous, a member of the legal committee in the Jordanian parliament, stresses it is possible to amend the draft law and to reconcile its text to other laws.
Basbous claims that debating the law in parliament will take time. The timeline will be determined by the length of consultation, legal advice, and technical opinions needed.
The challenges facing the “Law on Child’s Rights” are not limited to the legislative process. The law currently will only be executed in stages over several years, pushing out the benefits of the law into the future.
The Minister of Social Development Ayman Al-Mufleh clarifies that the recommendation to execute the “Law on Child’s Rights” over stages was made to prevent any financial repercussions. The Ministry is responsible for preparing studies
to select the poor families that would benefit from initial public health insurance coverage. The Ministry claims that there are thirty thousand poor families that meet the criteria to receive comprehensive public health insurance coverage in the initial stages. .
The latest draft of the “Law on Child’s Rights” of 2022 was approved by the government in April 2022, and includes amendments to the text of the original draft law. Most notably, it lays out a timeline for providing free primary healthcare to children. The draft timeline requires the implementation process begins “within a period not exceeding two years from the date of the law entering into effect, and shall be completed within a period not exceeding 10 years.”
The draft law also calls for regulating the execution of the tasks of the Ministry of Health, including the implementation stages and the groups and ages to be targeted by the law, and these should align with the provisions of this article.
Source: The General Department of Statistics
Arwa Al-Najdawi, an expert in the government’s spending on children’s services explains that the Jordanian government started allocating expenditures for children’s services in the budgets of concerned ministries in 2009. These allocations are a means to direct financial resources to provide children’s services rights across the various Ministries.
Designating financial resources to provide free healthcare to all children in the country could be a major challenge for the government. Data from the general budget for the period between 2015 and 2021 show that the Ministry of Health’s spending on children’s services has shrunk in recent years. The Ministry’s spending on expanding health insurance coverage for children has also been halved during that same period.
Source: The General Department of Statistics
Al-Najdawi, also an advisor at the National Council for Family Affairs, believes that there is no need to implement the “Law on Child’s Rights” over stages once it is approved; since the financial allocations for child's rights are already included in the general budget of ministries. She also notes that the “Law on Child’s Rights” should have been approved long ago, as special budget allocations for children were introduced more than a decade ago, stating that the delay is due to weak political will within parliament.
The Ministry of Health was asked to clarify the reasons why the “expansion of health insurance coverage” within the children’s allocations between 2015 and 2021 has shrunk, and to learn which age group would be given priority by the coverage once the law is approved. The Ministry did not provide a response by the time of publication.
After publishing the story the Jordanian Parliament passed the “Law on Child’s Rights”bill, but the implementation timeline over a 10 years to come is still unclear.