United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF) (May 2015-April 2016) UNICEF s support for the New Partnership for Africa s Development (NEPAD)

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1 United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF) (May 2015-April 2016) UNICEF s support for the New Partnership for Africa s Development (NEPAD) Collaboration with other UN agencies in support of NEPAD UNICEF has continued to facilitate the provision of human, technical and financial support to the African Union Commission (AUC) and NEPAD throughout the reporting period. UN agencies, including UNICEF, have been collectively supporting the AUC/NEPAD through the Regional Coordination Mechanism for Africa (RCM-Africa). UNICEF championed the mainstreaming of children in the programmes of the AUC and its Organs, and implemented activities jointly with the AUC/NEPAD and other UN agencies through joint annual work plans. UNICEF extended technical and financial support to the AUC, through the RCM-Africa framework. This involved the participation, in several consultative meetings, conferences and taskforces to develop and implement policies and strategies of the AUC. The United Nations Liaison Team (UNLT), which aims at Delivering as One, met regularly throughout the year and agreed to increase collaboration at the highest levels with the leadership of the AUC/NEPAD and UNECA. Throughout the reporting period, UNICEF worked closely with the AUC to implement the continental development agenda driven by the Millennium Development Goals and their successor the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the AU s Agenda 2063 with a focus on reaching every child, especially the most disadvantaged. UNICEF collaborated with UN partners, donors and civil society to foster strong relationships with the AU through joint programmes such as the Africa's Nutrition Security Partnership (ANSP) as well as on social protection, HIV, child marriage and strengthening the work of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. In addition, technical support was provided to the AUC in the areas of strategy development and publications to develop continental strategies on nutrition, health and education and a continental study on the impact of armed conflict on children. UNICEF also worked to position the African Child firmly on the continental agenda by high-level advocacy at key AU meetings and conferences and supporting continental and national launches of AU campaigns such as the AU Campaign to End Child Marriage. Governance, peace & security and humanitarian action priority sector Protection of children in humanitarian crises UNICEF provided counselling and psychosocial support to children who have been subjected to, or exposed to, violence and abuse during the Boko Haram insurgency. Nearly 136,000 children 1

2 in North East Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad have received such support as part of a range of humanitarian interventions supported by UNICEF and partners to help children cope with emotional distress. A total of 6,896 children have been identified as unaccompanied and separated in Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria. In the Central African Republic (CAR), with UNICEF support 130,629 children have been participating in psychosocial activities and 2,558 children have been released from armed groups in CAR. In Ebola affected countries (Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone) around 13,900 orphaned children were supported and more than 315,500 children have received Mental Health and Psychosocial support Services (MHPSS) support. In the midst of the conflict and refugee crisis in South Sudan the UN was able to respond at scale in the most challenging circumstances. The UNICEF and WFP Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM), comprised of teams of technical specialists, often deployed by helicopter to very remote locations, reached 540,000 people, including 95,000 children with services such as treatment of malnutrition, vaccinations, repair of boreholes for access to safe water, and support to nutrition partners to scale-up and re-establish services. During 2015, more than 540,000 people were reached with safe water, and 130,000 children under five were treated for Severe Acute Malnutrition. Furthermore, an estimated 365,000 children received critical child protection services. This includes 1,755 children released from armed groups and returned to their families, and benefiting from a socioeconomic reintegration programme. During 2015, UNICEF worked with UNHCR to implement a Regional Information Sharing Protocol (RISP) for cross border tracking and family tracing systems as part of a broader response to support the unaccompanied and separated children from South Sudan and Burundi, which is resulting in faster and better matching of unaccompanied and separated children with their families / caregivers. Within 48 hours of the arrival of the first Burundian refugees in Rwanda, UNICEF and partners were responding and supplies were deployed to the transit camps. As a result, over 56,000 Burundian refugee children are accessing education and more than 1,800 have received treatment for severe acute malnutrition. Positive results have also been achieved in Tanzania and Uganda, in support of the refugee influx in these countries. Continued support is also being provided for protection of vulnerable children in the country, and continued access to basic services and provision of essential supplies, particularly in health and nutrition given the report of health supply stock-outs and rising malnutrition levels UNICEF has provided significant technical and policy support to the AUC on areas of child protection and children affected by armed conflict through a staff member seconded to the Department of Peace and Security. UNICEF also worked with the ACERWC throughout 2015 on a Continental Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children. UNICEF is partnering with World Vision to undertake the study and has supported the costs of consultants and field visits. The study will be finalised and launched in Peacebuilding, education and advocacy 2

3 During the reporting period, UNICEF implemented Peacebuilding, Education, and Advocacy (PBEA) programmes totalling amount of 27.6 million USD in eleven countries (Burundi, Chad, Cote d Ivoire, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda). Through this programme, UNICEF carried out conflict analyses which all pointed to the exclusion of adolescents and youth as a major root cause of conflict along with poverty, inequity and weak social services. As a result, UNICEF implemented various conflict sensitive and peacebuilding interventions engaging adolescents and youth in peacebuilding, such as life skills training (Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Dadaab refugee camp); community-based volunteerism (Liberia, Sierra Leone); and participatory research (Burundi, Cote d Ivoire, Kenya, South Sudan, and Uganda). In addition, projects appealing to the natural interests of adolescents and youth were implemented, for example using social media, radio, music, sport and art (Burundi, Cote D Ivoire, DRC, Kenya, Liberia, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda). In Niger, as a continuation of an inter-agency project supported by the Peacebuilding Fund, UNICEF supported trainings on non-violent conflict management for 1,000 community actors (youth, women, traditional and religious leaders), the airing of 94 radio programs on topics related to peace promotion, as well as formal and non-formal education opportunities to engage youth and their communities in promoting a culture of peace and social cohesion in the regions of Tahoua, Diffa and Zinder. In South Sudan, UNICEF engaged over 1,500 youth in conflict prevention and reconciliation activities between government and community actors, while in Somalia over 3,000 community members and youth engaged in the participatory development of a national education curriculum that will support access to quality education for generations of Somali children. UNICEF s partnership with UNESCO-IIEP also led to the strengthening of conflict sensitive education services in Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda and South Sudan that will address root causes underpinning fragility and conflict while increasing the capacity of systems to support the most vulnerable children and young people during periods of crisis. Human development and gender priority sector Protection of children from HIV and AIDS In 2015, UNICEF continued working with the AUC to document best practices in emtct in five countries (Rwanda, South Africa, Nigeria, Chad and Tunisia). The emtct Best Practice report was validated in May 2015 at the Annual Meeting of the AIDS Watch Africa (AWA) Consultative Experts Committee and subsequently endorsed by the AU Summit in South Africa. UNICEF continued advocacy and quality technical assistance has been instrumental to countries in their efforts to protect children from HIV and keep them AIDS-free. UNICEF has contributed to many important policy changes across the continent such as the adoption of Option B+ (lifelong antiretroviral treatment for HIV-positive pregnant women) for PMTCT by Togo, Ghana, CAR and CDI and task-shifting policies (dispensation of ARV by nurses and midwives) by Cote d Ivoire and Chad. More African countries have developed national and sub-national emtct plans and acceleration plans for pediatric HIV treatment. 3

4 UNICEF played a pivotal role throughout 2015 in improving evidence-based programming in HIV for adolescents in eleven countries through All In! rapid assessments to boost adolescents access and uptake of services. This has resulted in improved epidemiological and programme data analysis, enabling governments to collate, review and validate data on adolescents, HIV and cross-cutting issues. Efforts to support the demonstration phase of the introduction of the HPV vaccine in adolescent girls resulted in the completion by Ghana, Gambia and Senegal of the adolescent health assessment and the prioritization of adolescent health interventions to be integrated with the HPV vaccine in Four countries in Eastern and Southern Africa were supported to develop HIV-sensitive social protection with the objective of building systemic linkages between comprehensive social protection systems and HIV/AIDS services. Technical guidance to promote HIV-sensitive social protection policy contributed to the development of HIV-sensitive social protection policy in one additional country in West and Central Africa. In addition, three new countries (Ghana, Guinea Bissau, and Nigeria) adopted the Family-Centred Approach (FCA). UNICEF supported the successful application to the Global Fund New Funding Mechanism for ten countries (Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, and Togo) for funding amounting to more than 510 million USD for the next three years. UNICEF s strategic engagement with the GFF enabled a further five countries - Burundi, Ethiopia, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia - to receive nearly $35 million specifically for integrated Community based Case Management (iccm) of common childhood illnesses. A joint HIV programme for the five middle-income countries in Southern Africa (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland) emphasised cross-country support and learning in adolescent programming on HIV as well as emtct. Protecting children against violence and harmful practices During the reporting period UNICEF worked with various partners to fight Violence Against Children (VAC) in many ways. Activities included generating evidence of different aspects of violence; providing technical support for the implementation of the VAC survey in Nigeria and the use of survey results for advocacy and planning purposes. UNICEF also contributed to a global VAC evaluation that is currently informing the debate on how to respond to VAC within the framework of the SDGs. Seven countries in Eastern and Southern Africa were also supported to undertake national VAC surveys and other important VAC research to identify where issues of violence take place and give the basis for planning how to address it. As part of efforts to fight harmful practices on children, UNICEF provided financial and technical support to the AU s Campaign to End Child Marriage. Key activities supported by UNICEF were a high-level breakfast event during the margins of the Assembly of AU Heads of State and Government; the adoption of a Common African Position on ending child marriage; national campaign launches in 10 countries; development of a specific M&E framework for the End Child Marriage Campaign, organisation of two regional capacity-building workshops in Abuja and Lusaka, and the organisation of the First African Girls Summit in Zambia. In addition 4

5 to supporting the campaign, UNICEF continues to assist countries to develop and accelerate national plans to end child marriage through improved programme design including results frameworks and the programme narrative. Under the umbrella of the Africa Programme on Accelerated Improvement of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (APAI-CRVS), an additional eleven countries were supported to undertake comprehensive civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) assessments and national strategy development to improve birth registration coverage. CRVS Strategic Plans, including scaling up interoperability and ICT for increasing birth registration through health sector were developed in eight countries. Under the CRVS project, UNICEF and its partners organized two major events: a Ministerial Conference for francophone countries on CRVS in Yamoussoukro, Cote d Ivoire, and an Expert s Training on CRVS in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Financial and institutional support for NEPAD programmes and projects In 2015, UNICEF supported four members of staff to work in the AUC in order to strengthen capacity in key programmatic areas: Nutrition Specialist seconded to the Department of Social Affairs to support the Africa Nutrition Security Partnership (funded and managed by UNICEF ESARO) Child Protection Adviser seconded to the Department of Peace and Security (funded and managed by UNICEF ESARO) Campaign Officer (consultant) in the Department of Social Affairs funded to support the AU s Campaign to End Child Marriage (funded and managed by UNICEF WCARO) Administrative Assistant seconded to the to the Department of Social Affairs to support the AU s Campaign to End Child Marriage (funded and managed by UNICEF WCARO) UNICEF also supported the costs of activities associated with the above posts as well as a number of consultants to bridge capacity gaps at the AUC and to undertake concrete pieces of work, for example to produce communication and advocacy materials for the ACERWC and Campaign to End Child Marriage. Advocacy in support of Africa s development A number of advocacy opportunities in support of child rights and welfare in Africa were conducted in collaboration with the AUC in 2015, including: In November 2015, the AU Commissioner of Social Affairs participated in the UNICEF Regional Management Team meeting for Eastern and Southern Africa. The Commissioner briefed UNICEF on the AU s role in implementing the SDGs and Agenda 2063, thus initiating an ongoing dialogue on how UNICEF and the AUC can work together to implement Africa s development agenda with a focus on children marked the 25 th anniversary of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Along with other partners, UNICEF supported the ACERWC to advocate for universal ratification and reporting of the Charter, also providing technical support to the eight countries 5

6 that submitted State Party Reports to the Committee (Madagascar, Namibia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Congo, Gabon, Lesotho). UNICEF worked closely with the AUC Department of Social Affairs and ACERWC to celebrate the Day of the African Child (DAC) which had the theme of 25 Years after the adoption of the African Children s Charter: Accelerating our Collective Efforts to End Child Marriage in Africa. UNICEF supported the ACERWC to organise a Continental Commemoration of the Day of the African Child in Soweto, South Africa. UNICEF country offices across Africa also organized national-level DAC events to raise awareness of children s issues and conduct advocacy with policy makers. UNICEF also supported the ACERWC to organise a conference on the status of children s rights in Africa after 25 years of the Charter during the Committee s 26 th Ordinary Session. Summary of Programme and IB expenditures for African Countries, Year Total African Fund UNICEF Countries Type in USD in USD million million % to UNICEF 2014 ORE , % ORR 1, , % RR % IB % Total 2, , % 2015 (provisional ) ORE , % ORR 1, , % RR % IB % Total 2, , % 6