Say Yes, 60th Anniversary Edition: Doing What is Possible, Achieving the Impossible

From its modest beginning some 56 years ago, the partnership in Turkey between UNICEF, the government, various NGOs, the private sector, the media, donors, children and their families has grown into one of the longest standing and strongest examples of national–international cooperation in child welfare and development in the organisation’s history.

Making a start

The initial Basic Agreement between UNICEF and the Government of Turkey was signed on the 2nd of February 1951, establishing the UNICEF Turkey Country Office four years after the organisation was founded. The partnership agreement committed UNICEF to assist Turkey in the supply and distribution of health services and materials for the benefit of children in return for the privilege of mentioning Turkey in promotional campaigns around the world.

During the first years of the partnership, UNICEF’s role in Turkey was quite typical of the organisation’s activities elsewhere in the world; distributing milk to schools and supporting the production of sustainable milk supplies. By the 1960’s, the UNICEF was promoting campaigns against tuberculosis, malaria, trachoma and leprosy and advising on health service reforms.

By the 1970’s, the notion that education did not begin and end during school hours had gained global interest and UNICEF began to promote the advantages not only of early childhood education but also flexible forms of education and training for adolescents and adults who had missed out on their schooling in Turkey. UNICEF began to work on the development of non–formal and open education systems including adult literacy with the Ministry of National Education (MONE). The partnership continues to this day in the development of the ‘catch–up’ education curriculum for children between the ages of 10 and 14 years who have not finished their primary education.

Turkey sets a global standard

When UNICEF launched the ‘child survival and development revolution’ in the mid–1980’s, Turkey agreed to host the first universal immunisation drive. At the time immunisation rates were as low as 20%, 29,000 children were dying of vaccine–preventable diseases every year and the infant mortality rate was as high as 95 per thousand live births. At the launch of the campaign, UNICEF Executive Director James Grant said that:

In trying to do the possible today, we take one more step toward achieving the impossible tomorrow.

The campaign was a massive challenge that required 45,000 vaccination posts, 12,000 health personnel and the training of 65,000 helpers. Public figures and celebrities of all description were enlisted to persuade parents of 5 million under–fives to get their children vaccinated not once but three times. The campaign became a truly national event and within two months of the September launch, a coverage rate of 84% of was achieved.

Visiting Turkey in 1988, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Audrey Hepburn said that Turkey was the most lovely example of UNICEF’s ability to provide brilliant organisational skills in partnership with cooperative nations.

We notified the Turkish Government that their infant mortality rate was very high and they sent a group to New York to study the programme we had completed in Colombia. The group went back and a total immunisation programme was planned in four months. The Turkish president and prime minister went on television, school teachers spoke from their desks and imams spoke from their pulpits. The army gave us their trucks, fishmongers lent us their wagons for the vaccines, and once the date was set, it took ten days to vaccinate the whole country. Not bad.

Other countries were encouraged by Turkey’s success to run similar campaigns and Turkey transformed her own system of health provision for children by raising public awareness of the need for immunisation. There have been many successes in child survival since the immunisation drive in 1985 — notably polio elimination in 2002 and the Ministry of Health measles elimination drive that achieved a 97% coverage rate between the winters of 2003 and 2004. The next step is to establish routine immunisation for all children in their first year if child mortality rates are to be reduced.

Looking forward for children

The UNICEF–supported National Congress on Policies for Children in 1989 highlighted some of the major issues that Turkey has sought to address since, including maternal and child health, early childhood development, inter–familial relationships, girls’ education, legal protection for children and combating child labour.

Policy–makers were exhorted to show sensitivity to children’s rights; voluntary and private sector organisations were encouraged to increase activities promoting the well–being of children; institutions for children should establish standards and provide training for staff; quality education, care and protection should be given to children in need of protection. It was also recommended that the media should inform the public on children’s rights violations and adopt a code of conduct for journalists and broadcasters that would demonstrate more sensitivity on these issues.

The child–friendly enviroment

By the end of the decade, Turkey’s capacity for mass mobilisation of resources was tested to the limit when over a quarter of a million children and their families were left homeless and bereft of basic services in the wake of the catastrophic Marmara earthquakes of 1999.

UNICEF contributed to the emergency response through provision of health and nutrition; water and sanitation; education and the psycho–social support project for children and their families, in partnership with MONE. Through the psycho–social project, Turkey pioneered a significant advance in child protection and education: the child–friendly space.

The central purpose of the child–friendly space was to resume school activities at the earliest opportunity thereby creating a sense of normalcy for children while they participated in a programme of exercises designed to help them deal with bereavement, the insecurity of homelessness and other traumatic effects of the disasters.

Lessons learned from the MONE/UNICEF psycho–social school project contributed not only to Turkey’s earthquake preparedness programme but also UNICEF responses to other emergency situations around the world.

Children’s rights

At the beginning of this decade, the Global Movement for Children’s (GMFC) Say Yes for Children campaign sought to raise awareness of children’s issues and prepare both the public and policy–makers alike for the 2002 UN Special Session on Children (UNSSC). UNICEF promoted the campaign in Turkey and also helped the Social Services and Child Protection Agency (SHÇEK) establish the provincial network of Children’s Rights Committees to promote and monitor implementation of the CRC.

The campaign proved to be another excellent example of Turkey’s capacity for social mobilisation as government ministries, the Higher Education Council, volunteers, the immensely popular Turkish basketball team, youth groups, school children and members of the police force worked to collect signatures and publicise priority actions for children.

At the close of the campaign, an astounding 16 million Turkish men, women and children had signed the pledge. At one in every four of the population, this represented the highest per capita response to the campaign of any other country — 17% of the total signatures presented to Nelson Mandela on the eve of the Special Session — and, in terms of sheer numbers, second only to the 20 million signatures delivered by China.

As emphasised by the CRC, children should have the opportunity to share their views with decision–makers on matters that affect them as well as being informed about those issues in a way that they will understand. Since 2000, SHÇEK has sought to respect this principle by organising the National Children’s Forum, with the support of UNICEF. Every year, delegates from each of the provinces convene in Ankara on the anniversary of the adoption of the CRC by the United Nations to discuss children’s rights issues. The first Forum in 2000 was instrumental in the promotion and success of the Say Yes for Children campaign.

Child participation has become an increasingly vital aspect of planning and programming for UNICEF and our partners in Turkey. Major initiatives in recent years, such as combating violence in schools, upgrading the juvenile justice system and life skills based education for adolescents have incorporated the essential views and opinions of children. At the seventh Forum in 2006, delegates launched a major child–led campaign to promote children’s rights all over Turkey.

Let’s go to school, girls!

Since the 1970’s, various UNICEF supported initiatives in non–formal education such as open education and adult literacy courses went some way towards addressing girls’ education by providing literacy and training for women who had missed out on their basic education. More recently, universal access to primary education, gender parity and women’s empowerment have been accepted as critical milestones towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Since girls’ education is intimately linked to all three of these issues, UNICEF advocated taking steps to close the gender gap in primary education in Turkey.

In 2003 MONE with the support of UNICEF launched the Haydi Kızlar Okula! campaign to enroll girls in primary school and keep them there. Action included raising awareness of the importance of girls’ education among provincial authorities, community leaders and parents; changing entrenched attitudes with door–to–door advocacy; canvassing media support and coverage of the issue at national and local levels; fundraising for extra classrooms and cash subsidies to help low income families send their girls to school.

The campaign quickly proved to be a further success in Turkey’s history of mobilising public and private support. As Haydi Kızlar Okula! gradually expanded to all 81 of Turkey’s provinces during the next three years, the gender gap in primary school enrolment closed by 15%. The campaign continues under the nationwide ægis of the MONE Child–friendly schools initiative.

The future

The positive environment of political, economic, social and institutional change engendered by Turkey’s preparation for accession to the EU provides an ideal opportunity for Turkey to reduce the social disparities that typify child poverty. Like many countries, including much wealthier nations of Europe and America, Turkey has some way to go in this respect: according to the latest Poverty Study by Turkstat, just under 28% of Turkish children under fifteen years of age were living in poverty in 2005.

Aside from the introduction of more fiscal policies favouring low income families, UNICEF advocates a comprehensive strategy to address the full range of social, cultural, political and environmental factors that affect children at risk of poverty in Turkey. A new data collection system, DevInfoTürk, based on 25 quality of life indicators (25 QLI), will be functioning in all 81 provinces by 2008. It is expected that the 25 QLI will improve monitoring of awareness and implementation of children’s and women’s rights, inform social policies for children and contribute to the development of a systematic structure that will protect children from the effects of poverty.

Focusing on child protection, education and early childhood development, the new Country Programme Action Plan (CPAP) between UNICEF and the Government will target areas with low human development indicators and low income families in general. The CPAP aims to close the gender gap and reduce drop–out rates in primary education; further reduce IMR and U5MR; establish and strengthen minimum standards of institutional care; make institutions and individuals accountable for violations of children’s rights; foster a protective environment for children and encourage the adoption of policies, laws and monitoring systems for their better development and protection.

The combination of rights–based initiatives and accurate, disaggregated data monitoring the state of women and children will not only reduce disparities and improve the well–being of this vast section of the population but also contribute to Turkey’s long term development objectives. The new CPAP will contribute to Turkey’s compliance with the CRC and CEDAW, the European Commission’s recommendations on Turkey’s progress towards accession and Turkey’s achievement of the MDGs as well as the goals of Section VI of the Millennium Declaration by 2015.

It is hoped that by the time UNICEF celebrates its seventh decade in 2017, Turkey will be an exemplary nation in a world fit for children.

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