Feicom and the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF reinforced, on September 22nd , their commitment to work together to strengthen human and financial capacities of local communities.

This is to ensure that the rights of children and women are better taken into account in the implementation of the decentralisation process. The agreement was initialed by the Director General of Feicom, Philippe Camille Akoa, and the UNICEF representative in Cameroon, Nadine Perrault.

The three-year renewable agreement will provide the communes with more financial resources to build infrastructure in the areas of protection, education, health and nutrition, water, hygiene and sanitation (WASH) and social policies for children and women. More specifically, the agreement will consolidate UNICEF’s interventions at the local level and should enable the UNICEF to integrate new themes related to the mandate of this UN agency into its actions.

“In this context, UNICEF will also make available to the UNICEF the experience and know-how of its institution in the field of children’s rights. In addition to this expertise, UNICEF will seek funding from national and international partners for the supervision of children and women in the framework of activities carried out jointly with the Feicom,” explains its representative, Nadine Perrault. The communes will thus have to set up projects which, once examined and selected, will benefit from funding.

Feicom and Unicef have been working together for several years through the establishment of synergies of actions to support decentralised local authorities, particularly in the context of decentralisation. This collaboration was formalized by a first memorandum of understanding in 2017 which allowed for several activities in the above-mentioned areas, says Philippe Camille Akoa.