Friday, 17 October 2014
Government, UNICEF Set to Continue Fruitful Cooperation
Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan received United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Regional Director for Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS Marie-Pierre Poirier, who is in Armenia to attend the annual meeting of UNICEF coordinators for this region.
Appreciating the UNICEF’s role in promoting children’s rights in Armenia, improving their health and living conditions, as well as describing the Fund’s activities as highly efficacious, the Prime Minister expressed readiness to continue backing any initiative launched by the UNICEF in our country.
Hovik Abrahamyan hailed the multitude of UNICEF-supported Armenia programs and assured that he would be consistent in getting all the agreements complied with and completed.
Welcoming the Government’s child protection-oriented reform policy, Marie Pierre Poirier reiterated her organization’s willingness to back the Government in its effort. In this context, she praised the introduction of a system of integrated welfare services in Armenia, which can set an example of good practice for other countries in the region.
Mrs. Poirier thanked the Premier for proper organization of UNICEF’s annual meeting in Yerevan, which inter alia discussed the next 5-year program of cooperation with Armenia.
“Our partnership is peculiar in that children are the focus with their comprehensive problems, rather than individual sectors,” the UNICEF Regional Director said, expressing satisfaction with the ongoing cooperation with the stakeholder agencies and, primarily, with the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.
Both sides stressed that the new Armenia-UNICEF cooperation program should deal with the challenges related to children’s status, including the support for the most vulnerable groups of children, the unloading of orphanages etc.
