Workshop on child friendly Municipalities Kicks Off

eveloping Child Friendly Cities is an initiative of UNICEF, the Ministry of Local Government and the United Nations Development Programme which defines and develops child friendly municipalities and communities. The CFC framework in fact identifies steps needed to build a local system of governance committed to fulfilling children’s rights through the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child by national governments. Today at the Biltmore, stakeholders including representatives from every municipality gathered for a workshop that will discuss in detail the fundamental building blocks to make various towns and cities child friendly.

Ivan Yerovie, Representative, UNICEF

Ivan Yerovie

“I’m sure you agree with me that there are a lot of issues affecting children in Belize. There are a lot of issues affecting adolescents, girls, sexual abuse, violence, discrimination. There are a lot of issues affecting children in the country. That requires not only a response from the government, from the central government; that requires a response from the mayors, from the cities, from the communities, from the households, from the families, from the fathers and of course the mothers. We need to listen to children; we need to provide children the opportunity to say what are those issues that are affecting them. And based on that, the idea today is to discuss in detail what are going to be those actions that we are going to work together. The idea of the child friendly cities or child friendly municipalities is just to be more systematic in the way we are supporting children; more systematic in terms of deciding what are those indicators that we are going to follow to measure progress.”

Daniel Alemu

Daniel Alemu, Asst. Resident Representative, U.N.D.P.

“It also aims to assess the relationship of these entities with other levels of government and the people that they serve. This assessment now serves to depict this snapshot of Belize’s sub-national government in terms of administrative and institutional procedures and arrangements that could enable localized progress towards an accelerated achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The results of this assessment, while only preliminary, are pivotal and provide a sound basis upon which local governments in Belize can increase their engagement in the conduct of holistic public policy and also execution of sustainable and child friendly municipalities.”