Programme of Cooperation 2012-2016
The Dominican Government and UNICEF have started their planning process for 2012-2016
In 2012 UNICEF started a new Country Programme with the Government of the Dominican Republic, to provide continuity to the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with a focus on equity and social inclusion.
The principal objective of the Programme of Cooperation 2007-2011 was to make effective children’s rights to survival, development, protection and participation. It was centred in strategies for strengthening national policies on budget application and allocation, as well as improving their effectiveness in achieving the strengthening child protection systems.
At the conclusion of the previous Programme, the Dominican Government, together with UNICEF, made a commitment to make progress in the fulfilment of Children’s Rights and the Millennium Development Goals.
With the new Country Programme (2012-2016) “Children and adolescents will enjoy their rights by helping the country to make progress towards the elimination of the obstacles that hinder their access to quality social services, through the creation of protective environments in the communities and the construction of a broad social partnership for monitoring the fulfilment of their rights.”
The main expected results of the Programme are:
1. A reduction in the disparities in access to quality and inclusive social services in the areas of health and education.
2. An improvement in the capacities of all state institutions to protect children against violence, abuse, exploitation and human trafficking.
3. Generation of knowledge for influencing inclusive policies and increasing investment in children.
In order to achieve these results, national and local capacities will be strengthened for campaigning for basic social services with the aim of improving coverage and quality and reducing the gaps. In addition, ten provinces in the south west and border regions, selected bateys (sugar cane workers’ communities) and marginal areas in Santo Domingo and Santiago will be prioritised, based on their high levels of social exclusion.
The new Country Programme is based on four cross–cutting themes:
• Participation of children and adolescents.
• Integrated risk management and basic commitments to children.
• Communication for promoting changes in practice and behaviours that ensure equal treatment and social inclusion of all children.
• Gender equity for reducing all situations of exclusion, discrimination and vulnerability.
COMPONENTS OF THE NEW COUNTRY PROGRAMME
1. Inclusive and quality social services in health and education
This component will contribute to eliminating barriers of all types that prevent the most excluded children and adolescents from accessing quality social services. It will have two sub-components: health and education.
This sub-component will be developed in the framework of the Decennial Health Plan 2007-2015, the Zero Tolerance Strategy and the Primary Health Care Strategy. It will contribute to:
• Reducing maternal and neonatal mortality in the hospitals that have been prioritised.
• Reducing mother-child HIV transmission and the rate of congenital syphilis.
• Increasing coverage of health and nutrition programmes for integrated care in early childhood.
• Maintaining the cholera epidemic under control and supporting emergency preparedness and response in the areas of health, nutrition, and water and sanitation.
It will support the implementation of the National Educational Plan and Educational Goals for 2021, as strategies for cultural change and human development. The component will focus on:
• Improving quality and coverage of pre-school education from the ages of 0–5.
• Improving progress in learning in primary and secondary school teaching.
• Reducing the school dropout rate at secondary level.
2. Protection of children and adolescents and institutional reform
UNICEF will support the capacity development of the protection institutions, judicial branch and civil society organisations in their efforts for:
• Strengthen the capacities of state institutions in the protection system at national and local level, with the aim of improving the protection of children and adolescents against all forms of violence, abuse, exploitation, traffic and trading.
• Guarantee the right to an identity for all children by strengthening the timely and late birth registration mechanisms.
• Reduce the number of children who are institutionalised for reasons of poverty or conflict with the penal law.
3. Management of knowledge and political influencing for social inclusion and equity
This component will contribute to the creation of a sub-system of statistical information disaggregated by gender, age, race, origin and territories, and by socio-economic conditions. It will also help knowledge of the causes of social exclusion of children and adolescents to be generated, and will involve an analysis of the impact of political and economic decisions, as well as diffusing knowledge for building national alliances, influencing decision making and advocating for the fulfilment of the rights of the children and adolescents who live in this country.
Our main governmental partners are CONANI (National Council for Children and Adolescents), the Ministries of Public Health, Education and Economy, Planning and Development, respectively; the Central Electoral Board (JCE), the National Congress, the Judicial Branch, the Attorney General’s Office, the National Council for the Reform of the State (CONARE), the ONE (National Statistics Office) and the Chamber of Accounts. At a local level, UNICEF will work with the decentralised local government’s health, education and protection bodies.
• Interagency work
The process of drawing up UNDAF (United Nations Development Assistance Framework) 2012-2016 has strengthened coordination and joint planning between the agencies of the United Nations System. UNICEF will work with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and the IOM (International Organisation for Migration) in the protection of children who are irregular and unaccompanied immigrants and in the fight against the trade and trafficking in children; with PAHO (Pan-American Health Organisation, the UNFPA (UN Population Fund), UNAIDS and UN Women we will work on reducing HIV and mother and child mortality rates, on adolescent and youth participation, on improving sexual-reproductive health and on promoting gender equity; with the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) on issues of governance.
UNICEF is a member of the "Donor Platform," a coordination body that brings together the main international cooperation, multilateral and bilateral agencies, which include the World Bank (WB), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the European Union (EU), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID).
This Country Programme provides new opportunities for extending our alliances with religious and civil society organisations, in coordination with the Dominican Government. We hope to establish strategic alliances with the private sector in order to strengthen corporate social responsibility, and to leverage and optimise resources for children and adolescents in the Dominican Republic.