The United Nations Children’s Fund in Georgia and the Embassy of France on Wednesday launched a partnership initiative to strengthen children’s rights across the country through expansion of capacity of children’s rights experts, support for professionals in providing quality services for children and strengthening of children’s rights centres.
Titled Strengthening Child Rights in Georgia, the project will seek to enhance capabilities of the centres established with the support of the UNICEF at state and private universities as key institutions for knowledge creation, dissemination, training and child rights-related activities, the UNICEF said.
It will target university centres in regions to be able to educate professionals, educators, lawyers, academia, local governments, civil society representatives, parents, youth, and children, with the initiative also focusing on empowering youth to lead work at the institutions.
Partner universities will be encouraged to create a new master’s degree programme to train professionals to handle a range of child-related issues. The MA programme will also provide in-depth knowledge and understanding of specific legal, social, educational, psychological and policy issues concerning children’s rights.
The project will also initiate a dialogue with relevant stakeholders and develop a concept of a specialised “children’s judge” in close cooperation with the Supreme Court of Georgia and other partners to further strengthen the justice agenda for children and support implementation of the Juvenile Justice Code and the Code on the Rights of the Child.
The UNICEF said it would work with the Georgian Parliament, the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the General Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Education, selected universities, bar associations, youth boards and organisations, civil society, schools and other relevant agencies together with the Embassy to achieve the objectives.
The initiative will also leverage the knowledge and experience of French specialists in a “variety of ways” including workshops, training sessions, practice and sharing activities.
Source : Agenda