The Upper East Regional Coordinating Council has held a co-ordination and alignment meeting with regional and district partners on humanitarian and child marriage programme implementation with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).
This brought together officials of the Regional Coordinating Council, the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO), department of children, civil society actors, personnel of the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit(DOVVSU),Ghana Education Service amongst others to strategize on managing humanitarian crisis and child marriage.
The objectives of the meeting is to introduce the thematic area (humanitarian) and child marriage of UNFPA and the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council partnership and its key stakeholders, to discuss plans and priorities of key stakeholders and partners to be implemented during the year.
It was also meant to establish a shared understanding of roles, responsibilities, and expectations among stakeholders.
Beyond the co-ordination meeting, it is expected that the UNFPA funded intervention will lead to the undertaking of annual joint monitoring of interventions in humanitarian and child marriage by the Government of Ghana, UNFPA, and the RCC, operationalization of existing disaster preparedness plan at the regional level to support Sexual and Reproductive Health and Gender Based Violence in humanitarian settings.
Other activities to be carried out include organize community dialogue sessions in 2 districts using the framework for engaging men and boys to strengthen recognition for Gender-Based Violence, hold quarterly essential service providers meetings to strengthen the collaboration and coordination among service providers and to hold follow-up meetings in Navrongo and Bongo Paramountcies and their communities to review progress on commitments/action plans to end child marriage, address challenges and provide technical support.
Speaking during the Meeting Yvonne Wunchua, Assistant Director I and UNFPA Focal Person at the Regional Coordinating Council, disclosed that the Upper East Region has been marked as a humanitarian region given its flood prone status, pockets of conflicts and the threats presented by extremism .
“The UNFPA has marked as a humanitarian region and with this region having pockets of violence, the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council was then chosen to implement the program in relations to what to do in terms of sexual and reproductive health issues in emergencies and Gender-Based Violence in emergency and that is why the RCC brought the various officials together to look at what to do especially, the NADMO officials from disaster prone areas.” She stated.
Speaking during the engagement, the Upper East Regional Gender Desk Officer, Rita Mbama, called for collaboration to reduce issues affecting adolescents and girls.
“We encourage all of us to collaborate. We need to work together as partners to ensure that our girls and even our boys are safe and continue to be in school.” She appealed.
