Country programme action plan

The Framework

1. Basis of Relationship

1. 
   The Basic Cooperation Agreements (BCA) concluded between the Governments and UNICEF on:
   

Grenada 15 July 2002

St. Lucia 22 May 2003

St. Vincent and the Grenadines 17 June 2003

Antigua and Barbuda n.a.

Barbados 23 September 1994

St. Kitts and Nevis 22 April 2003

British Virgin Islands 08 July 1960

Turks and Caicos Islands 08 July 1960

Montserrat 08 July 1960

2. 
   The CPAP is based upon and further elaborates the Country Programme Document (CPD) for the Eastern Caribbean, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago 2008-2011 which was endorsed by the Governments of Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean and discussed by the Executive Board of UNICEF in June 2007. The CPD was in turn based on the relevant programmatic areas outlined in the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) 2006-2010. Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago have developed a separate CPAP in cooperation with the Guyana UNICEF Office.
   

2. The Situation of Children and Women in Barbados, Turks and Caicos and the OECS region

1. 
   This multi-country CPAP covers 10 countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, managed by the UNICEF Office for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean based in Barbados. Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean countries covered by this document are included in the draft United Nations Development Assistance Frameworks (UNDAFs) 2006-2011 for the Eastern Caribbean countries but are not yet part of a harmonized UN programming cycle. Therefore, this programme will span just a four-year period to facilitate harmonization of the programme cycles of all other UN agencies by 2012.
   
2. 
   While the political situation of the ten Middle Income Countries (MICs) covered is relatively stable and democratic, all countries face increasing levels of social and economic disparities affecting the fulfilment of rights of children and women. Up-to-date data on poverty trends are not widely available. However, there is some indication that extreme poverty has decreased while indigent poverty has increased, as in the case of St. Lucia where extreme poverty decreased from 7.1% in 1995 to 1.6% in 2005. Poverty levels per capita range from 14% in Barbados to 39% in Dominica thus underscoring the significant economic disparities and the potential long-term impact on social stability of these countries. Children and youth represent over 50% of the poor in all countries and are among the most vulnerable to its effects.
   
3. 
   The Composite Commonwealth Vulnerability Index¹ lists many of the Small Island Development States (SIDS) amongst the most vulnerable in the world as a direct result of the prevalence of natural hazards, global warming, and the susceptibility of the economy to external factors such as unfavourable trade agreements, fluctuating oil prices and the unpredictability of income from tourism. These volatile economic conditions coupled with high migration rates in turn help to destabilise social services with many skilled teachers and nurses leaving the region. Migration also undermines the cohesion of families and communities. For example, in Dominica, 55% of all households have a close relative living overseas.
   
4. 
   According to MDG progress reports, the Eastern Caribbean countries are most likely to achieve the MDGs 1, 2, 4 and 5. Nevertheless, additional resources and efforts are needed to achieve the objectives 3, 6, 7 and 8. Unless urgent attention is given to prevention of HIV/AIDS, child protection, quality and relevant education, social inclusion and violence, the fulfilment of children’s rights will remain in jeopardy.
   
5. 
   Addressing the high vulnerabilities in the sub-region is hampered by significant data gaps on key social policy indicators. This is a consequence of a historical lack of institutional capacity in collecting, analyzing and applying disaggregated data. This limits the capacity to undertake evidence-based policy planning. Notwithstanding this, there is a need to integrate social and child-rights dimensions more purposefully and effectively into the formulation of national and regional poverty reduction and development strategies including those dealing with structural adjustment, macroeconomic policy design or trade agreements. This also includes the need for a stronger involvement of civil society in social policy shaping – taking into account the particularities of MICs and SIDS.
   
6. 
   Most governments in this sub-region have made substantial efforts in investing in basic social services, as agreed by the 20/20 initiative. Nonetheless, there is evidence that in various countries, expenditure allocated to basic services has been decreasing. The high level of debt burden in many countries (ranging up to 99 percent of GDP (CDB, 2005) in Grenada) hampers sustainable public funding for social sectors. As a result of the rising costs of living, certain physical infrastructures have deteriorated, and there is evidence of a continuous brain drain as skilled human capital continues to migrate. Analysis of gender and child-related investment remains a challenge but once undertaken more consistently will lead to a clearer understanding and mainstreaming of children’s and women’s rights in fiscal allocations.
   
7. 
   There is weak institutional capacity for the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of social policy programmes, compounded by the dispersal of resources and communities across small islands. Evaluation where it exists is often limited to financial monitoring, and the kind of disciplined, qualitative data that would help to better understand the different dimensions of social inequities and that would provide much-needed detailed analyses of the profile of child protection issues, is lacking. There is little documenting and sharing of diverse social intervention models, despite a growing South-South cooperation through existing frameworks such as CARICOM and the OECS.
   
8. 
   While the CRC and CEDAW observations are increasingly reflected in some National Plans of Action, children and women’s rights issues are still not adequately integrated into national legislation frameworks and policies. In almost all countries, Concluding Remarks of the Committee on the Rights of the Child stressed the inadequacy of legislative reform. They pointed to such issues as discrimination on the grounds of age; obligations for the best interests of the child to be a primary consideration in judiciary and administrative processes; continuing access problems for children and women to juridical and legal services; and the need for enhancing national policies from a child perspective.
   
9. 
   Social policy innovations are critically needed across the life-cycle and should cover early childhood development, inclusive and relevant education, child protection, HIV/AIDS, youth and life-skills, parenting education and emergency preparedness. There is a need for greater responsiveness to children’s and women’s rights in institutional provision.
   
10. 
    The number of reported cases of physical abuse of children in their homes and communities, as well as in caring institutions, and the number of crimes committed by children against other children, is increasing. In a 2006 study of violence in the Caribbean, 10% of the boys and 5% of the girls reported that they had at some time been knocked unconscious in a fight, with similar numbers reporting that they had been shot at or stabbed.
    
11. 
    Yet more serious is the alarming frequency of child sexual abuse. In a survey of Caribbean school children (2006), an average of 11% of girls and 9% of all children reported that they had been sexually abused including through incest. Among adolescents who are sexually active, almost 80% of boys and 50% of girls report that sexual initiation occurred before the age of 13. As many as 40% of girls reported that their first sexual initiation was forced. Early initiation and low levels of condom use contribute to high percentages of teen pregnancies and exposure to STIs and HIV, accounting for between 10 and 20% of live births in Dominica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
    
12. 
    In spite of this urgent scenario, juvenile justice systems are still not fully harmonised with international human rights instruments. In most countries, the age of criminal responsibility is less than 18 years and ranges from age 7 to age 12 in the Eastern Caribbean. Children can be committed to institutions for juvenile offenders for being ‘beyond control’, often as a result of proceedings initiated by a parent. This has led to some children who come in conflict with the law being incarcerated, since diversionary, restorative and community-based rehabilitation programmes are seldom in place. In some cases, since they have no protected custodial facility, children who are deprived of their liberty are placed in the same facility as adults.
    
13. 
    In almost all countries, children in residential care facilities are not protected either by enforced legislation or by systems of regulation. Other vulnerable groups are children with disabilities, child labourers and trafficked children. Currently only 5% of students with special needs are accommodated at special schools and approximately 15-20% of children in primary schools are reported to have special educational needs. Trafficking of children within and beyond the Caribbean is an emerging and worrying issue, linked with adverse effects of migration.
    
14. 
    HIV/AIDS has emerged as a major development problem for the Caribbean region, second only to sub-Saharan Africa. Estimates for adult prevalence rates range from 0.25% and 0.26% respectively in St. Lucia and Grenada and 1.5% in Barbados. There is a gender dimension involved, with the annual reported incidence of HIV three to six times higher in girls and women between 15 to 24 years old in comparison with males in the same age group. Another concealed issue is the stigma and discrimination children face if they or their family are affected by HIV/AIDS. Studies indicate that while most young people are knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS, this knowledge has not yet been translated into behavioural change. In many countries rates continue to increase as young people engage in risky sexual behaviours.
    
15. 
    Average infant and child mortality across these island states fell from between 25/1,000 and 22/1,000 in 1990 to between 18 and 9 in 2004. Under-five mortality rates vary across the region, from 27,9 in Grenada, to 11 in Barbados (PAHO, 2005). The proportion of infants with low birth weight remains high, ranging between 8 to 13% across the Eastern Caribbean. The incidence of exclusive breastfeeding at six months is low. Care of young children falls heavily on female headed households, due to the frequent absence of fathers. This situation, combined with the lack of positive male role-models adversely affects full development and child socialization, especially for boys. The lack of on-going family support combined with shortcomings in parenting skills, often leads to authoritarian child rearing practices and the common use of corporal and other forms of abusive punishment.
    
16. 
    Access to day care services for under-two year-olds varies from 5 to 53%, and preschool enrolment rates range from 55 to 100%. Although most countries are moving towards universal secondary education, there still remain significant challenges in the area of children’s right to education. In almost all countries, the school environment remains authoritarian with corporal punishment legal, prevalent and in some cases on the increase.
    
17. 
    The main underlying constraints to the full realization of children’s rights in these countries include economic and emergency related vulnerabilities and the high incidence of child and youth poverty, insufficient prioritization of children and women’s issues at the institutional level and social disparities. In summary, the Eastern Caribbean governments face poverty and protection issues which arise from significant economic inequalities and poor wealth distribution. This is compounded by their Middle-Income country status in which these inequities are structurally embedded and their alleviation under-resourced in weakening institutions. It is further compounded by small island development status in which communities and resources are too small and dispersed for government to find affordable solutions, and yet further compounded by historical and cultural tolerance of certain social attitudes towards violence by and against children.
    

3. 
   
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   faculties -> 2011 – 2012 EĞİTİM-ÖĞretim yili lisans programi öĞretim plani I. Yariyil
   
   
   
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