National Strategic Plan on Vulnerable Children 2012 - 2017.

This National Strategic Plan on Vulnerable Children 2012 - 2017 is a cross-sectoral policy document at national level. The overall aim of the Strategic Plan is to improve the quality of life of vulnerable children and to ensure that they enjoy their basic human rights.
Food insecurity has significant long-term implications on the care and protection of vulnerable children and their families. According to the Document, available information indicates that the majority of vulnerable households have neither adequate access to food nor the purchasing power to buy foodstuffs. Most of the vulnerable households are dependent on subsistence farming that is subject to erratic weather conditions. Chronic food insecurity caused by diminishing agricultural yield and the absence of other livelihood options has become a serious survival problem. Based on the situation analysis, the Plan suggests the following strategies: i. Strengthen household food production systems and food support mechanisms to promote food security and access to nutrition. ii. Increase family and community knowledge and skills in nutrition (including aspects such as frequency and diversity of feeding). iii. Accelerate the implementation of policies and regulations that promote community and household food security. iv. Strengthen coordination mechanism of service providers involved in food security.
As the sustainable care and protection systems for vulnerable children and individuals are those that have strong family and community support, one of the strategic priorities is strengthening the capacity of families and communities to protect, care for, and support vulnerable children, in particular, economic empowerment through sustainable livelihood. Economic empowerment is premised on the understanding that deepening poverty, breakdown of traditional social and economic safety nets, and decline in economic growth affect vulnerable children in different ways including increasing food insecurity, decline in household income and more importantly the inability to meet their basic needs. Strategies are developed, including: i. Provide tools (i.e. guidelines, manuals, etc.) necessary to support training of families and communities in care and protection of children. ii. Improve and harmonise community-based training of families and communities in vulnerable children’s care and protection. iii. Develop skills and competencies for households with vulnerable children and communities to initiate, manage and sustain livelihood interventions. Another strategic priority is to strengthen social, legal and judicial protection of vulnerable children and their families. For social protection, the outcome result will be: Vulnerable households caring for children who received cash assistance in the last twelve months increased to 50% by 2014/15 and to 75% by March 2017. Operational strategies are: i. Facilitate coverage, expansion and availability of social protection services that have the greatest impact at household and community levels. ii. Facilitate the development and implementation of a policy and legal foundation for the development and sustenance of social protection interventions, i.e. formulation of a national social development policy. iii. Facilitate the implementation of existing policies and legal instruments aimed at creating an enabling environment for children and in particular vulnerable children. iv. Strengthen mechanims for monitoring child rights violations, or lack of compliance with policy guidelines and legal provisions aimed at protecting children. v. Facilitate the review and harmonisation of existing policies to mainstream policy guidelines for social and legal protection of children. vi. Facilitate the dissemination of such policies and legal instruments to duty bearers and rights holders (children).