MAPUTO, Mozambique, 20 April 2011 – The Government of Mozambique, UNICEF and partners made significant progress in 2010 towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals and the three country program priorities Young Child Survival and Development, Basic Education and Gender Equality and HIV.
The UNICEF Mozambique 2010 Annual Report highlights these achievements, particularly UNICEF’s strong, collaborative partnerships with the Government and with national and international organizations. The report outlines achievements and challenges in UNICEF’s main areas of operation: Health and Nutrition; Water, Sanitation and Hygiene; Basic Education; Protection; and Social Policy, Advocacy and Communication.
Child Health Weeks resulted in 3.7 million children in May and 3.2 million children in November benefitting from an integrated child survival package. The package included vaccination against measles, vitamin A supplementation, nutrition screening and deworming. In addition, about 499,500 people in rural areas gained access to sanitation facilities. Life skills interventions, with a particular focus on HIV education, reached 1.3 million children in all provinces. More than one million children received birth certificates. Some 750,000 people in rural communities received key child survival, education and protection messages.
Innovative partnerships helped keep children’s issues on the national development agenda. Partners came together to form a Civil Society Budget Monitoring Forum which strengthened domestic accountability and supported equitable resource allocation. Strong partnerships with the Ministry of Women and Social Action, bilateral donors and national partners helped scale up social protection measures. The approval of the ‘Social Security Strategy’ by the Council of Ministers was a milestone due to the clause explicitly providing social transfers to poor households caring for orphans and vulnerable children, a target group which had only been indirectly covered before. A multi-sectoral ‘Action Plan for the Reduction of Chronic Malnutrition’ was also approved to respond to a problem that affects 44 per cent of Mozambican children.
Public-private partnerships aiming to leverage corporate resources for women and children were also reinforced. UNICEF participated in Mozambique’s International Business Fair with an exhibit on child-friendly corporate social responsibility. In addition, the Minister for Women and Social Action and the UNICEF Representative launched the annual Corporate Social Responsibility Fair in Maputo. Senior business administrators participated in sessions on child-friendly corporate social investment.
In line with the Paris Declaration and the Accra Action Plan, the Government and partners made progress towards harmonizing, aligning and adopting more flexible aid modalities to support the national development agenda. UNICEF continued to engage in the sector-wide approach and provided financial contributions to the health, education and rural water and sanitation common funds in 2010.
For more information, please contact:
Arild Drivdal, UNICEF Mozambique, tel. (+258) 21 481 100; email: maputo@unicef.org
Gabriel Pereira, UNICEF Mozambique, tel. (+258) 21 481 100; email: maputo@unicef.org