Nana Oye Lithur – Minister for Gender & Social Protection
Nana Oye Lithur, Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, has commended the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Board for remaining committed to improving the welfare and wellbeing of children around the world.
She noted that the decline in under-five deaths, percentage of underweight children, new HIV infections, number of out-of-school children and increased access to drinking water and sanitation are results of UNICEF’s collaboration with Governments around the world.
Nana Oye Lithur stated these at the 2014 Annual Session of UNICEF Executive Board meeting at the UN Secretariat in New York, USA, which also focused on major policy and programme issues and progress reports.
The Gender Minister, however, observed that Africa still carried the burden of the highest percentage of under-five mortality, neonatal deaths, out-of-school children, malnourished, undernourished and stunted children.
She underscored the commitment of African States to working closely with UNICEF to address these challenges; adding that“ Africa is on the rise with fast-growing economies and greater ambition and commitment of its Governments to improving the lives of its people.”
She therefore called on UNICEF to increase its investment in strengthening national capacity to collect and analyse data, scale up the engagement of UNICEF country offices with national authorities to facilitate knowledge and experience sharing and expertise.
Nana Oye Lithur also called for better monitoring and evaluation of interventions, particularly through the expansion and application of the UNICEF MoRES tool.
On Ghana’s progress in reducing infant and maternal mortality and improving school enrolment rates, Nana Oye Lithur attributed the nation’s success, among others, to the integration of the Millennium Development Goals into Ghana’s developmental frameworks.
She also noted the strong collaboration between state institutions and non-governmental organisations in working to improve the lot of children in Ghana.
The four day meeting, which is expected to end on June 6, considered the Final Results Framework of the UNICEF Strategic Plan, 2014 – 2017, report on progress of work in gender equality and empowerment of women in UNICEF, UNICEF Gender Action Plan 2014 – 2017 and nine country programmes.
The UNICEF Executive Board highly commended Nana Oye Lithur for her active participation in all the sessions of the 2014 annual meetings of the Board.
Alongside the Executive Board Meeting, the Gender Minister also took the opportunity to hold high-level meetings with key officials responsible for child protection and social protection in UNICEF and other UN Agencies towards strengthening Ghana’s legal and policy framework for the protection of children and other vulnerable groups as well as the institutional growth of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection.
Source: GNA
