Ombudswoman for children’s rights Maia Bănărescu and a number of active NGOs in the field of child and family protection call on the Prime Minister, minister of education and research and minister of health to take action to urgently implement the World Health Organization’s water, sanitation and hygiene standards in all the national schools, IPN reports.
In a call addressed to the responsible institutions, the signatories say the right to health, to the harmonious physical and mental development of the child is one of the basic rights stipulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, while the creation of a safe and comfortable environment for these children to realize the rights to health and education is one of the key objectives of the state.
Following the monitoring of the provision with water and creation of sanitation and hygiene conditions in education institutions, the ombudswoman ascertained that there are serious problems related to the supply of water, provision of the institutions with health workers and ensuring of hygienic conditions in sanitary facilities.
“The sanitary conditions at the education institutions of the Republic of Moldova do not meet the minimum standards of the World Health Organization and in some of the cases endanger the children’s health and safety. In many schools in Moldova, the toilets are outside the institution’s building and the conditions at these toilets do not meet the sanitary norms or safety norms, these toilets representing unhygienic areas with an awful smell, with one or several holes in the floor, without booths, without water for sanitation, without even primitive sanitary installations, without heating, often without a door or with doors that are ready to fall, etc. All these toilets do not have washbasins, water and soap. Such conditions, besides damaging the children’s dignity, seriously violate children’s rights to health and education. This situation seriously violates the rights to physical and mental integrity, to health, to decent living and education, to water and safety,” says the call.
