The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Hon Nana Oye Lithur at the 2014 Annual Session of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Board.
The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Hon Nana Oye Lithur, has represented Ghana at the 2014 Annual Session of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Executive Board held at the UN Secretariat in New York, USA from 3rd to 6th June, 2014.
The Session which was under the theme: “UNICEF Special Focus Session on Africa’s Children” focused on major policy and programme issues and progress reports such as 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”.
Speaking on behalf of the African Group of States, Hon. Nana Oye Lithur congratulated the UNICEF Executive Board for its leadership and applauded UNICEF for remaining committed to improving the welfare and well-being of children around the world.
She also congratulated Mr. Anthony Lake, Executive Director of UNICEF on his re-appointment.
The Hon Minister also noted 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 as a result of UNICEF’s collaboration with Governments around the world.
She 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.
“In a positive direction, it was estimated that by 2050, ‘1 in every 3 children will be from Africa’, necessitating greater investment in this human resource potential,” she stressed.
To this end, Hon Nana Oye Lithur underscored the commitment of African States to working closely with UNICEF to address these challenges. She noted that Africa was on the rise with fast-growing economies and greater ambition and commitment of its Governments to improving the lives of its people. She called upon 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.
Hon Nana Oye Lithur also called for better monitoring and evaluation of interventions, particularly through the expansion and application of the UNICEF MoRES tool.
The Hon Minister also responded to questions during the ‘Question and Answer Session’ dubbed, ‘The Promise of Global Partnerships for Africa’s Children CRC@2039’.
In her response to questions on Ghana’s progress in reducing infant and maternal mortality as well as 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 UNICEF Executive Board highly commended the Hon Minister for her active participation in all the sessions of the 2014 annual meeting of the Board.
Alongside the Executive Board Meeting, Nana Oye Lithur 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: ISD (Benjamin Tandoh)
