Situation Analysis of children and adolescents in Moldova

SitAn UNICEF Moldova

PROJECT CO-ORDINATOR

Veronica Sandu

PROJECT TEAM AT THE EUROPEAN CENTRE

Rahel Kahlert, Magdi Birtha, Tamara Premrov

BACKGROUND

Moldova faces great demographic, economic and social challenges. The country population is shrinking due to high emigration rate, rapid ageing, and low fertility rates. Moldova has a modest and volatile economic growth, which is further halted by the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Inequalities in Moldova are on the rise with high differences in learning, earning and access to basic services between urban and rural areas, between lower and higher educations, and mostly across different income quintiles. All these factors directly affect children, adolescents, and their families. The access to basic services is restricted for some children in Moldova. This is due to the geographic concentration of service offer, high informal payments, stigma, and discrimination of some population groups. Moldova has made progress in implementing children's rights in the last years, still, a number of areas need further attention.

AIMS

The Situation Analysis has the following objectives:

Develop a deep understanding of the situation of children and adolescents by analysing the policies and strategies and the social and economic trends affecting them.
Identify and analyse the barriers and bottlenecks that prevent disadvantaged children and families from benefiting from social services across sectors.
Provide national government partners with comprehensive equity-sensitive and evidence-based analysis on children and adolescents for result-based decision-making.
Provide essential information to non-government partners to be used in their planning and interventions to address the most urgent issues affecting children and adolescents in Moldova.
Contribute to the (re)formulation of key national strategies so that the priorities for the most disadvantaged children and adolescents are integrated into the socio-economic development agenda.
Identify critical data gaps and contribute to the generation of evidence that can improve the monitoring of rights of children and adolescents, especially for the most vulnerable groups.

METHODS

The Situation Analysis will draw on an extensive desk review, including examination of a wide range of national and regional legislations and regulations, plans, studies, reports and statistics. In addition, the Situation Analysis will consult a diverse range of actors through key informant interviews. The interviewees will contribute with their first-hand knowledge and thus complement the information collected through desk research and secondary data analysis. The following actors will be consulted:

Central and local government institutions.
Civil Society and non-profit organizations working with children and/or representing children, with a focus on the most marginalized.
Experts, researchers, think-tanks and academia working on child-related subjects.

ACTIVITIES/MILESTONES

The project is divided into three phases:

Inception phase, which will be concluded with the presentation of an inception report and an inception workshop.
Preliminary analysis phase, which will consist of two parts:
- Desk research.
- Primary data collection.

The preliminary phase will be concluded with the presentation of a preliminary results report and an in-country-mission to discuss the report.

Drafting and presentation of the Situation Analysis report phase.

The report will have two versions, a comprehensive one and a summary version. The summary report will be validated with the reference group and key partners. The final summary report will consolidate comments of the validation process.

OTHER INFORMATION

Contracting authority: United Nations Children’s Fund Moldova

The European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research supports the Sustainable Development Goals

Source: Number of child-focused indicators within each SDG goal Url: https://data.unicef.org/resources/briefing-notes-on-sdg-global-indicators-related-to-children/ (date: 30/6/21)

www.unicef.org

PROJECT DURATION

06/2021 – 02/2022