Protecting Children in Nicaragua
Photo: AMC
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The CWS Regional Program on Vulnerable Children and Youth is supporting grassroots advocacy and direct service delivery efforts aimed at preventing and eradicating commercial sexual exploitation of children working in five markets and two poor barrios of Managua in partnership with the Human Promotion Institute (INPRHU).
Through the project, 350 children working in the markets (age 10-18), their parents, government officials, and ordinary citizens will receive information on the status of commercial sexual exploitation of children in Nicaragua, and on measures to prevent and eradicate it. In addition, some two hundred girl victims of sexual abuse and exploitation will receive proper care and counseling in a safe environment.
INPRHU is an active member of the Coordinator of Non-Governmental Organizations that works with children and adolescents, the National Forum of Education and Human Development, and the National Council of Integral Protection to Children. It contributed to the creation and approval of the Childhood and Adolescence Code of Nicaragua, valid since 1998; it also contributed to, and followed up on the creation of the national plans for: Eradication of Child Labor, National Plan against Commercial Sexual Exploitation and the National Plan for Integral Protection of Children (2000-2015). As such, INPRHU's focus is to define and apply Special Protection Policies based on the coordinated action of national and municipal public authorities with its institutional technical coordination. INPRHU considers the issue to be one of shared social responsibility. Its strength is in generating and validating methodologies that favor and enrich specific measures to defend and fulfill childhood and adolescence rights where children and adolescents have direct participation and decision-making capacity on the development of the project's processes, since all activities are based on their willingness to voluntarily participate.