PALIKIR, Pohnpei—His Excellency David W. Panuelo, President of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), in an effort to revitalize Nation-wide conversations on children and their needs, has reinstated the President’s National Advisory Council for Children (PNACC).
PNACC’s objective will be to develop an integrated and comprehensive FSM Child Rights and Protection Policy (CRPP), that will include prevention, response, and services, as well as bridges to all the relevant obligations within the FSM and State Constitutions as well as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC). PNACC will also develop an implementation plan to include: legal and policy framework, preventative and responsive services, human and financial resources management, mechanisms for effective collaboration and coordination, and information management and accountability at all levels of Government.
“Part of the idea,” President Panuelo said in a statement, “Is that children are directly or indirectly affected by every facet of our society. If one third of women in our Nation will experience domestic violence at least once in their lifetimes, then the children and young relatives of the victims and the abusers will experience it indirectly, too. If ten percent of children below the age of 16 are not enrolled in school, despite it being mandatory for them to be so, it fosters an environment more conducive to poverty and lack of opportunity—and there’s further a relationship between poverty, and the lack of opportunity, and domestic violence in the first place.”
“There is a Pohnpeian proverb that goes ‘Piletik me kin aude pillap’, meaning that a small river fills a big river. If our society’s decisions are not guided by questions like ‘How does this help children?’, we will metaphorically pollute our smaller rivers, our children, until such a time where the Nation’s adult population, our big river, is necessarily affected by choices affecting our small rivers.”
The PNACC will be comprised of the relevant National Departments that represent the interests of children, and will be led by the Department of Health and Social Affairs (DHSA) through the Department’s Child Protection Coordination Program. Additional members of the PNACC will include the Department of Education (DOE); the Department of Justice (DOJ); The Department of Resources & Development (R&D); the Department of Transportation, Communication & Infrastructure (TC&I); the Department of Environment, Climate Change & Emergency Management (DECEM); the FSM Office of National Archives, Culture & Historic Preservation (NACH); representatives recommended by State Governors; development partners; faith-based organizations; and other non-government organizations.
The PNACC originally came into existence in the early 2000’s as a response to the FSM’s ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Children (CRC) on May 05, 1993. The FSM later ratified the CRC optional protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography on April 23, 2012. The FSM further ratified the optional protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict on October 26, 2015.
The CRC convention was the first Human Rights Convention that the FSM ratified after it became a member country of the United Nations on September 17 , 1991. The CRC also outlines the FSM’s responsibilities in protecting children from all forms of violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation. The CRC recognizes that the primary responsibility for the care and protection of children falls upon a child’s parents, though it also emphasizes the role of governments to keep children safe and to assist parents with their child-rearing responsibilities.
“With the recreation of the [PNACC], the FSM National Government will begin again in the work of coordinating supportive policies and programs for children’s rights and protection. I expect the members to begin each formal meeting with the question: ‘how does this help children?’, and to ask it again before making any decision to bring forth for my review and/or the review of the 22nd FSM Congress,” President Panuelo said.
