Japan’s long-standing partnership for children in Senegal
UNICEF thanks Japan for its long-standing partnership for children in Senegal
DAKAR (Senegal), 25 August 2022 - For decades, Japan has been one of UNICEF’s largest donors and strongest supporters. Its long-standing partnership has enabled UNICEF to save the lives of millions of children and young people across the world.
Japan plays a leading role in shaping global policies on key areas such as human security; global health and universal health coverage; the humanitarian-development nexus; disaster-risk reduction and resilience-building; women’s empowerment; and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
In 2021, Japan was the third-largest government resource partner to UNICEF and one of the largest contributors to UNICEF’s COVID-19 response, which was an all-time record high in the history of the Japan-UNICEF partnership.
Mitigating the impact of Covid-19 on children and families
In Senegal, thanks to the generosity of the Japanese people and the commitment of the Government of Japan, UNICEF has been able to alleviate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on vulnerable children and families, to support the national COVID-19 response while safeguarding the continuity of key social services for children.
UNICEF was able to act decisively in response to COVID-19 by providing key hygiene and medical supplies, as well as prevention measures to benefit more than 390,000 vulnerable people and children. Japan’s support also proved pivotal in ensuring continuity of essential health, nutrition and child protection services for 150,000 vulnerable children, women and their families during the crisis. UNICEF distributed vital supplies to treat severely malnourished children, provided equipment to neonatal units to care for sick newborns, and improved management of acute respiratory infections for children by training healthcare workers and providing oxygen.
Japan’s support enabled UNICEF to improve protection of children deprived of parental care, social welfare services and transit centres to detect at-risk children and provide temporary care and family reintegration. UNICEF also trained social workers to provide urgent psychosocial support to affected children and families.
Strengthening Senegal’s cold chain and safe delivery of vaccines
In 2021-22, Senegal also received 270 refrigerators for COVID-19 vaccines, donated by Japan to reinforce the country’s cold chain, ensuring safe distribution and delivery of vaccines nationwide.
The reinforcement of the cold chain has not only helped Senegal to continue its COVID-19 vaccination campaign, but it has had a lasting impact on the country by improving its ability to manage its cold chain for routine immunisation in the long term. Read more
In March 2022, Senegal received an additional batch of 300,000 doses of Astrazeneca vaccines donated by the Government of Japan through the Covax facility. Japan has been providing COVID-19 vaccine-related support in cooperation with the COVAX Facility and other international frameworks to ensure equitable access to safe, effective, and quality assured vaccines in all countries and regions in order to globally overcome COVID-19. Read more
In addition to financial support to the COVAX Facility, Japan has been promoting vaccine donation, based on domestic manufacturing and inoculation capacity, requests from the international community, and the situation of COVID-19 infections in each country or region. Japan is also providing “Last One Mile Support" which supports the delivery of vaccines to vaccination sites.
COVID-19 early recovery and response plan for the basic education sector in Senegal
In Senegal, JICA and UNICEF also built a new partnership to support the education system to help children catch up on learning loss, build foundational literacy and numeracy skills in vulnerable primary schools, and improve girls’ education, school attendance and retention rates.
Through this partnership, UNICEF supported the Ministry of education with (i) the printing and distribution of exercise books targeting primary schools’ learners, with learning content focusing on foundational literacy and numeracy skills, to support remediation activities in public primary schools. 250,000 exercise books were developed and distributed covering all levels of the primary education cycle.
The partnership also supported the implantation of reading and resource corners in 300 public primary schools with a view to promote a reading culture in pupils and improve learners' literacy skills, and to support teachers on the same, targeting schools in underprivileged settings which do not have the financial means nor the space to open a school library. Read more
For many girls in Senegal, getting their period means putting their lives on hold. In some places, menstruation is associated with stigma and girls feel embarrassed, often excluding themselves from school and other social activities during their periods. Lack of access to functional and segregated toilets, limited information on menstrual hygiene management, and limited availability of sanitary materials to manage menstruation make it more difficult for girls to manage their periods.
Through the partnership with JICA, a total of 1,422 schools (338 in Kédougou, 554 in Matam and 530 in Tambacounda region) have been provided with dignity kits, benefiting overall 142,200 girls enrolled in public primary, middle and high schools. Read more
