Baby-friendly cities

Children Fund UN UNICEF initiative “Bab- friendly city” successfully goes with the development program of small and middle towns of the Republic of Belarus: the both cases pursue the same aim that is to improve the well-being and living standards of people.

Children Fund UN UNICEF initiative “Bab- friendly city” successfully goes with the development program of small and middle towns of the Republic of Belarus: the both cases pursue the same aim that is to improve the well-being and living standards of people.

“This initiative is being implemented in many countries, - said Irina Chutkova, UNICEF programms coordinator in the Republic of Belarus, to the www.soyuz.by correspondent, - and it corresponds very successfully to the resolutions of the world summit “World suitable for children’s life” that took place in 2001”.

“Baby-friendly city” is not a single action but a long process. Last year Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia, Vilnius and Tallinn in Baltic region, Paris, Florence and many cities of Italy, Spain and Switzerland joined this project. The very idea of the initiative appeared in 1996 after UN Habitat ll. It became to be actively realized under UNICEF support starting from 1998 when more than 60 cities of Croatia joined it. For coordination and medical assistance rendering International Secretariat was created in Florence in 2000.

The city can claim for the baby-friendly status only in the case when it corresponds to a range of criteria developed by coordinating body. Every state has its own criteria and they can cover the health care system and education system as well as leisure activities, city security and environmental situation.

Belarus joined the UNICEF initiative in 2007 after the successful implementation of the pilot scheme project in Svetlogorsk under the support of the regional department of education.

Victoria Lozyuk, the coordinator of the UNICEF program “Children and youth health and development; HIV/AIDS prevention” in the Republic of Belarus, explains: “We advocate the expansion of this initiative on the national level. We are ready to support the initiative in the assessment criteria development directly by children themselves with the help of the experts. The next step could become the creation of the coordinating council under National commission on children’s rights that will promote this idea and take the monitoring and its realization estimation function. For its part UNICEF will render assistance with information support and personnel professional level rise that means the participation in seminars and conferences. With our help it will be possible to consult foreign experts to consider the best foreign experience. And we are also ready to provide a little technical assistance in some concrete events realization in the cities that desire to join the initiative”.