Mainstreaming Children into Ethiopia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy

In August 2005, with the revision of Ethiopia’s Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program (SDPRP, as Ethiopia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) is known) coming up towards the end of the year, the Young Lives Ethiopia team lobbied for the new SDPRP to include policies for tackling child poverty. Drawing on Young Lives research, the team took their key findings and policy recommendations to the country’s development policy community, including relevant government ministries, with the aim of influencing them to make the SDPRP II more pro-poor and child-sensitive.

Young Lives believes that it is important to mainstream children into national development and poverty reduction policies such as Ethiopia’s SDPRP because these policies profoundly affect poor children. A general focus on the poor in such policies does not automatically address childhood poverty, therefore it is crucial to advocate for them to be both pro-poor and child-sensitive.

Initial feedback from the development policy community in Ethiopia indicates that the Young Lives team’s recommendations for revising the SDPRP have been well received. The team is certainly hopeful that the new SDPRP will reflect their efforts. Watch this space for further developments…

Download the executive summaries of the five papers containing the Young Lives Ethiopia team’s findings and recommendations (the full versions of these papers will be available on this web site later in the year):

• Mainstreaming children: a child-focused analysis of Ethiopia’s sustainable development and poverty reduction program’s poverty analysis, policy goals and targets
• Child labour, gender inequality and rural/urban disparities: how can Ethiopia’s national development strategies best address negative spill-over impacts on child education and well-being?
• Children’s educational completion rates and achievement: implications for Ethiopia’s SDPRP II (2006-10)
• Tackling Child Malnutrition in Ethiopia: to what extent do the SDPRP’s underlying policy assumptions reflect local realities?
• Who is benefiting most from education expansion in Ethiopia? Implications for addressing wealth, gender and urban/rural educational disparities in Ethiopia’s SDPRP II.