Child-Friendly Cities and Communities: 10 Initiatives from 10 Countries

The child population in cities are rapidly increasing, and sixty per cent of the world’s children will live in cities by 2025. Hence, there are growing interests in promoting child-friendly cities and communities. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) produced an action framework for building child-friendly cities and communities as well. This framework identified the steps to build a governance system committed to fulfilling children’s rights based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Likewise, the Plan International organization in cooperation with the Cambodia National Council for Children has introduced and developed an initiative in Cambodia on child-friendly community. This initiative aims to improve a conducive environment for children where their rights are recognized, supported, and realized. In this book, the author selected the Smile Village initiative in Phnom Penh city, Cambodia as a case study focused on child-friendly dimensions. Nine other international initiatives from other countries were selected to study on these dimensions as well. Finally, the author compared the ten-country initiatives and their fulfilled building block(s).