What can a child growing up in a less developed country expect from life? A joint government and UNICEF report released this week aims to find an answer. Fatemah Farag attends the launching ceremony, and sifts through the findings of The situation of Egyptian Children and Women: A rights-Based Approach On Monday, UNICEF, the National Council for Children and Motherhood (NCCM) and the Ministry of Planning celebrated the launch of their joint report on the conditions of children and women in Egypt. Although Shahida Azfar, who heads UNICEF Egypt, admitted that, "publishing a dry book of statistics and analysis isn't normally a cause for much celebration; organisations like ours do it all the time," she emphasised that "this report on the situation of Egyptian children and women is much more than just figures and graphs." According to Mushira Khattab, head of NCCM, the report is a "first". It's also a clear indication of the priority and importance the Egyptian government attaches to improving the lives of children and women. Clearly, an important part of the launch as well as the report itself was to highlight the advances made by the Egyptian government in advancing the rights of children and women. However, as Azfar pointed out: "Make no mistake: what this report clearly demonstrates is that despite the gains registered in the last decade or so, important challenges must still be tackled." According to Azfar, "The report does something never before attempted in this country, which is to pull together and synthesise a whole range of data and information, gathered from many different sources, in order to create, in the end, a detailed snapshot of the lives led by millions." Minister of Planning Mohamed Osman, whose involvement with the report started when he was still head of the Planning Institute, clarified that "this report is a prototype of co-ordination and cooperation between the various players involved in the development of Egypt." Khattab concurred that "the report [represented] wide and active participation of the government agencies and the non-governmental community. It is a national report." The findings of the report (see review below) are supposed to serve as a guide for future government policies and for the contributions of external partners -- such as UNICEF. These findings may also serve as a tool to measure Egypt's performance in meeting its national goals and commitments to the international community. Khattab noted that the report's findings were already the basis for several NCCM programmes while Osman added that these had been incorporated in the upcoming five-year plan. But while "development through participation" was a key phrase used throughout the launch, Sabry El-Shabrawy, management professor at the American University in Cairo (AUC) noted that the report relies on the central government for implementation of policies and the identification of problems. At the same time, El-Shabrawy notes, "the local government has more understanding of its needs and demographics. The inclusion of local government -- and the concept of decentralisation -- allows for the inclusion of the actual participants in the development process." Hisham El-Sherif, former head of the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre, noted that there could have been more "Egyptian" figures in the report, while a representative of CAPMAS, the central statistics agency, argued that there had not been a high enough level of co-ordination with the agency itself. In answering this point, Khattab argued that the information for the report was ready two years ago. Nonetheless, she failed to provide an explanation as to why it would take so long to synthesise the information. Differences aside, everyone seemed to agree that the information available was enough to move forward. Khattab noted that the time was particularly apt: with the Special Session on Children which took place in May behind us and the Sustainable Development Summit coming to a close in Johannesburg, the international arena is ready to forward the interests of children as partners in development. This week's launch brought Karin Sham Poo, the deputy executive director of UNICEF, to Egypt for the first time. Sham Poo agreed with Khattab that the "future shape of the global agenda for children" had been set with the declaration entitled "A world fit for children" issued by the May Special Session. The time had come to provide children healthy lives, quality education, protection against abuse and HIV/AIDS. Sham Poo added in light of the meetings she held in Cairo: "I feel confident that Egypt will live up to the task."
