Catherine Sasman
5 December 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
So, we are trying to make some strategic shifts. We are considering how we can bring our technical experience to help the country move ahead on some of these areas.
There are a whole lot of other areas that we have started to focus on more during the last two years of our country strategy. This is to focus on child-centered social policy, and budgeting for children.
When people, for example, talk about gender-based violence, they really talk about violence directed at women, and not understanding that as many or more serious issues around violence in the household are directed against children by both men and women.
Do you experience problems to raise funding for Namibia, particularly because it is a middle-income country?
We do raise funding from international donors and internally as well. We have a small amount of resources because most of the indicators are good because it is a middle-income country. But we don't feel that we need to bring in huge amounts of money into country. What we are focusing on more is leveraging the existing resources or other resources that are coming in. We have not sold our story enough to national committees in industrialised nations.
On the point of leveraging, one of the things I've tried to do since I came to Namibia is to get UNICEF staff to have real partnerships with the public development sector in the country, and leveraging their resources.
Another area we try is to involve the private sector in the country in more corporate social responsibilities with a child-centered lens on.
UNICEF was critically involved in mitigating the flood situation we've had in the north at the start of this year. Will it again be involved should such a situation again emerge?
Yes, we are in three ways. Every year we up our emergency response plan. We still have staff - a nutritionist and water sanitation engineer - that are in the north helping with continued rehabilitation and recovery from the flood this year. We are keeping those people up there until March next year, just in case. We are trying to work with regional councils in the north along with other partners to build on some sort of preparedness.
Having gone through the process earlier in the year, which was a first time for many development partners and Government - a lot of lessons have been learnt.
We are relatively well prepared for that and we are also continuing strong contact with our office in Angola in relation to cholera. Angola was cholera-free for nearly a decade and so has lost all their expertise in dealing with cholera. But we are in contact with them, regarding equipment and treatments.
We have resources stockpiled in Angola, which makes it easier to bring it across the river. Hopefully the floods won't happen, but I think we will be in a much better position than the last time.
But there certainly is a long way to go to strengthen Government's response systems in emergencies like that.
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