UNICEF Ghana marks World Children's Day

UNICEF Ghana has marked the World's Children's Day in Accra to create an environment for children to be heard and listened to.

Members of the Children’s Parliament in Ghana shared their hopes for a better future and turned the Kwame Nkrumah Gardens into a bastion of hope with the various activities to mark the Day.

They spoke about how they perceived Ghana in the future by re-imagining a better country for children without early marriage and teenage pregnancy.

They also spoke about good sanitation, a country free of violence and a future where every child would have access to good education.

Among the high profile personalities who graced the occasion were Mr Charles Abani, the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Ghana, Madam Anne-Claire Dufay, UNICEF Representative in Ghana, and representatives from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, who wished the children a happy Children's Day.

Madam Dufay, in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, said with the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of children were out of school and expressed the hope that things would normalise for them to resume next year.

She said UNICEF was also reimagining a better future for children, especially the marginalised, so they could be protected and learn to improve on their talents.

She recounted that 30 years ago, in February 1990, Ghana became the first country to ratify the UN Convention on the Right of the Child, and that the country had drafted a Report, which would be submitted to a Committee on the Right of the Child in Geneva.

"This report is going to describe the situation of children, the gaps thereof and what remains to be done,” she said.

“And we know what the gaps are - early marriage, sanitation, safe water, clean environment without open defecation and of course learning - quality inclusive education for every child free of violence… is what we are imagining for every child in Ghana."

Madam Dufay lauded the Government for all the steps it had taken to contain the spread of the COVID-19.

Seventeen-year-old Leticia Nuruyang, a product of Wa Methodist School for the Blind, who was the Speaker of the National Children's Parliament, urged her peers to take their education seriously.

Master Albert Gyimah, a 13-year old student of Nyamfa-Okaikrom at Effiduasi in the Ashanti Region, said he reimagined Ghana where there was no open- defecation.