Child Friendly Cities and Communities

The UNICEF Gabon office and the Port-Gentil City Council signed a memorandum on July 7, 2022 as part of the "Child-Friendly Cities and Communities" initiative for a period of 3 years. An initiative that aims to protect and promote the rights of children.

What is a child-friendly city or community?

By signing a three-year memorandum with Dr. Noe?l Marie ZAGRE, UNICEF Representative for Gabon, Sao Tome & Principe and ECCAS, Mayor Gabriel TCHANGO has committed the economic capital to a challenge that should, if all goes well, lead the city to obtain the label "Child Friendly City". What is it about?

The "Child-Friendly City" label is awarded by UNICEF to a city, community or local governance system that commits to respecting the rights of the child as enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted by the UN on November 20, 1989.

Child Friendly Cities is a global network of over 3,500 members in which the voices, needs, priorities and rights of children are an integral part of public policies, decisions and programs.

In order for Port-Gentil to become a Child-Friendly City, the Mayor's Office and UNICEF have developed a multi-sectoral action plan for children and youth to be implemented over the next three years. The moment will then come for the evaluation made by UNICEF headquarters to confer or not the label to the city. A challenge which, as the mayor of the economic capital underlined, is not "a project of the city council alone; it is a question of building around this initiative, all the resources of the city of Port-Gentil".

Through the voice of its representative, UNICEF, partner of the project, considers that "Our children must obtain this support, this environment, this quality, inclusive and participatory education, develop their skills, express their opinions and influence the decisions that affect them. The same is true for family, social and cultural life in their cities/communities, etc.".