The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Wednesday appealed for increased local and international support for children in war-torn Somalia, where basic services such as education,
health, nutrition and clean water are limited as a result of two decades of conflict.
"Somali communities, families, parents, local administrations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), donors and international organizations should have a collective responsibility to put the best interests of the child first," said UNICEF's representative in Somalia, Rozanne Chorlton, according to a UNICEF press release.
"This sense of responsibility should be engrained in various planning and budgeting initiatives for the welfare of Somali children," Chorlton said in
a message to mark African Union's (AU) Day of the African Child.
According to UNICEF, a major impediment to the provision of services to children and women in Somalia is limited revenue.
For example, Somalia needs to spend 35 U.S. dollars per person per year to finance a public health system, but the country is among those least able to do so, especially in the south-central region where the Transitional Federal
Government (TFG) provides no public funding for health care.
Even, where some semblance of a local administration exists, such as in the
self-declared republic of Somaliland in the northwest and the north-eastern self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, the local authorities are only able to provide 50 cents per person.
The AU's Abuja Declaration commits African governments to set aside 15 percent of their national budgets for health. The Somaliland and Puntland administrations spend only between 2 and 3 percent of their public expenditure on health, according to UNICEF.
"Though there is significant private, community and charitable contribution to health services in the country, public health authorities need to take the lead in making realistic commitments to clearly articulated public priorities within their current financial capabilities so as to attract further funding from donors," said Austen Davis, the head of UNICEF's Accelerated Child Survival and Development program in Somalia.
"It is also vital that the international community finances projects across multiple years feeding into strategically coherent as opposed to disparate short-term projects. Donors urgently need to harmonize and pool their financing with other counterparts to ensure longer-lasting, more coherent and strategic engagement," he added.
UNICEF noted that existing models of successful public-private sector collaboration in Somalia, which already benefit children, could be enhanced
with additional public funding.
"In a country where scarce water resources and uneven distribution exacerbate poverty and inequalities, the public- private partnership
approach, supported by UNICEF and its donors, has made low-cost water, sanitation and hygiene services available in urban settings," the agency
said in a statement.
The Day of the African Child is marked on June 16 each year to honor the memory of school children killed in 1976 during a demonstration in Soweto,
South Africa, to protest inferior education by the apartheid administration and to demand lessons in their own language.
As South Africa on Wednesday marked the Youth Day, commemorating a major anti-apartheid uprising by students in Soweto, outside Johannesburg in 1976, South African President Jacob Zuma urged today's young people to be vigilant against criminals.
Speaking at the Youth Day in Thulamahashe in South Africa's Mpumalanga province, Zuma praised the South African National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) for its work in improving the lives of young people.
However, he remained baffled by people who torched public buildings to complain about services.
"It is still baffling as to why someone would torch down a clinic because they do not have a school or destroy a library because the water taps have run dry," he said.
According to the South African Press Association (SAPA), Zuma said it was much easier to destroy than to build.
Every facility was an investment for future South African generations, he said.
"I appeal to our youth to be vigilant against these criminal elements," said Zuma.
It was important not to forget the "commanding significance" of the event on June 16, 1976 and the past and future role of the youth, he said.
The June 1976 Soweto uprisings saw hundreds of black youths shot dead by apartheid police. It was a pivotal time in the struggle against apartheid, which eventually led to South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994.
On Wednesday Zuma said South Africa was making progress towards addressing youth issues through the work of the year-old NYDA.
Through the NYDA it had helped create more than 30,000 jobs, issued more than 4,000 business support vouchers, and had helped improve access of the youth to funds.
SAPA reported that about 7,000 loans, amounting to 3 million U. S. dollars were disbursed to microfinance enterprises and more than three 400, 000 U.S dollars were also given out to small and medium enterprises.
In addition, there are plans to build 34 houses, symbolizing 34 years since 1976 in Mpumalanga and refurbish selected schools in all nine provinces
during Youth Month which is June.