Policy and Strategic Framework on Childhood Development and Protection in the Agriculture Sector 2016-2020.

The Vision of the present Policy is defined as follows: Children in the agricultural sector are healthy, well-developed and their rights are protected. The Mission for child development and protection is: To create the legal land policy framework, develop supportive mechanisms, build capacity of relevant officials, promote the understanding of child protection and development to parents and guardians, establish and strengthen the monitoring and evaluation mechanisms and mobilize resources to support the effective promotion of the protection and development of children in agriculture. The Goal is: To promote the protection and development of children in agriculture, especially vulnerable children in poor farmer households.
Part 4 lays down provisions relating to the situation of children in rural areas. At first the issue children and nutrition is addressed establishing that a multi-sector approach needs to be adopted to reduce maternal and child malnutrition. Furthermore, the Chapter deals with children working in agriculture, children working in family-based agriculture, children working on plantations, hazardous working conditions, access to education and professional skills in agriculture, also climate change and resilience of children in agriculture is dealt with.
The objectives for this Part are as follows: 1) promote food security and nutrition of vulnerable children through improved and diversified food production; 2) protect and prevent children from child labour, including hazardous work, in the agriculture sector; 3) improve vocational skills of youth in agricultural production; 4) strengthen institutional capacity, resources and commitment within the Ministry of Agriculture, forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) to ensure effective mainstreaming of childhood development and child safety in agriculture
The Ministry will adopt two main approaches to achieve childhood development and child protection. First, it will build capacity internally the Ministry to effectively mainstream childhood development and protection throughout all programs and projects and to develop corresponding safe guards. Second, it will design programs which address some of the most urgent problems faced by vulnerable children in rural areas. The MAFF will work in partnership with other ministries, development partners and non-governmental organisation.
The responsibility for the implementation of the Policy and Strategic Framework on Childhood Development and Protection rests at the highest level within the MAFF. The question of monitoring and evaluation is two-fold: 1) Agricultural programs and projects have direct and indirect implications on childhood development and child labour even if they do not address this issue directly. Given the challenges of tracing the impacts standard sets of indicators should be developed and integrated into the existing MAFF monitoring and evaluation procedures. In accordance with the Gender Mainstreaming Policy and Strategic Framework of MAFF, a gender sensitive monitoring and evaluation system is required.
The text consists of 5 Parts as follows: Introduction (1); Background (2); MAFF Vision, Mission and goal on Child Development and Protection (3); Strategic Framework (4). This Parts consists of the following chapters: 1) Situation of children in rural areas dealing with children and nutrition, children working in agriculture, access to education and professional skills in agriculture, climate change and resilience of children in agriculture; 2) Scope of policy and strategy framework; 3) Strategic objectives and outcomes; 4) Strategies; 5) Implementation; 6) Financial Resources; Monitoring and Evaluation. Action Plan (5).