Mission & Vision

Vision

Children in the Middle East and North Africa are able to fully participate and enjoy their rights.

Mission

To advocate, raise awareness, and empower civil-society organizations to defend, promote, and protect children’s rights and participation.

Overall Goal

To build an Arab society capable of respecting children’s rights and providing a safe, protective, and empowering environment for all children in MENA.

Specific Objectives

Strategic Objectives:

1. Advocacy
   Advocate for policies, laws, and funding mechanisms that prevent and reduce violence against children.
2. Empowerment
   Equip and support child-rights defenders to promote and safeguard children’s rights.
3. Evidence
   Develop and disseminate a strong evidence base from regional research, successful projects, and activities to strengthen funding opportunities and improve responses.
4. Collaboration & Coordination

Strengthen regional cooperation and partnerships to accelerate collective action and expand the delivery of services.

1. Humanitarian Response

Enhance regional responses to child participation in humanitarian emergencies.

STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE NARRATIVES:

1. Advocacy

Advocacy is a core activity for civil society organizations. Partnerships between civil society and policymakers contribute to development services, humanitarian relief, innovation in service delivery, localized capacity building, and advocacy for the poor. By using stronger evidence, civil society organizations can:

1. improve the impact of their service delivery,
2. increase the legitimacy and effectiveness of their policy engagement efforts, and
3. monitor the relevance and alignment of policy recommendations.

The impact of civil society organizations on policy can be strengthened through context analysis, engaging policymakers, gathering robust evidence, partnering with key actors, and effective communication.

The new strategy highlights the Network’s commitment to intensifying its advocacy to support children’s rights.

2. Empowerment

Empowering child human-rights defenders is central to this strategy, which recognizes four articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child as “general principles. These are:

1. Article 2: Non-discrimination;
2. Article 3(1): The best interests of the child as a primary consideration;
3. Article 6: The child’s right to life, survival, and development; and
4. Article 12: The child’s right to have their views given due weight.

These four articles can be applied as cross-cutting issues across all other rights stipulated in the Convention. This strategy is grounded in these four principles in empowering human-rights defenders and guiding adults’ responsibilities to ensure the empowerment and protection of children in their role as human-rights defenders.

This strategy remains firmly committed to these four principles in empowering human-rights defenders and ensuring that adults take the necessary measures to support and protect children as they act as defenders of their own rights.

3. Evidence

Evidence is vital. Research shows that knowledge management and learning tools—when effectively applied—can significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of organizations engaged in development and humanitarian work. Moreover, the overarching ambition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all means that organizations in both development and humanitarian sectors require knowledge and learning tools that contribute not only to efficiency and effectiveness, but also to improved responsiveness, strengthened partnerships, and enhanced policy influence.

To this list, one can also add key planning, monitoring, and evaluation considerations such as relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability.

Manara’s priority is to generate high-quality knowledge products—research, assessments, case studies, and documentation of success stories—that strengthen decision-making, funding, and advocacy.

Knowledge and learning are linked to two primary objectives:

1. organizing, monitoring, and sharing existing knowledge, and
2. improving the conditions for innovation and knowledge creation.
   However, knowledge and learning plans and tools alone are not sufficient to achieve these goals. Research shows that organizations are more effective when knowledge tools, processes, relationships, collaboration, organizational contextual factors, and external factors are addressed in an integrated and coherent manner.

4. Collaboration & Coordination

Collaboration is essential for implementing and monitoring this strategy. As noted earlier, the Network aligns with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In particular, the Network considers SDG 17 – Partnerships for the Goals to be especially important to its work over the next five years. SDG 17 seeks to strengthen global partnerships to support and achieve the ambitious objectives of the 2030 Agenda by bringing together national governments, the international community, civil society, the private sector, and other actors. The Network recognizes that partnerships are essential to achieving its objectives

5. Humanitarian Response

Humanitarian responses are also critical. Children are particularly vulnerable to illness, malnutrition, and violence during emergencies and humanitarian contexts. These threats are further exacerbated by population growth, urbanization, environmental degradation, large-scale climate change, migration and forced displacement, as well as public health emergencies.³⁶

The Network is committed to supporting children and their families during emergencies by providing the necessary protection interventions, ensuring the rights of all children, and strengthening the linkages between humanitarian and development work.

Network Members

1. Movement for Human Rights – Alef (Lebanon)

A youth-led, non-governmental organization focused on monitoring, promoting, and protecting human rights in Lebanon through education, training, advocacy, and campaigning.

2. Amal for Family and Child (Tunisia)

A Tunisian NGO established in 2000 that works to prevent the abandonment of newborns, support unmarried mothers, and reintegrate them socially and economically.

3. Bayti Association (Morocco)

A non-profit Moroccan organization that supports children in difficult circumstances, including street children, working children, abandoned children, juvenile offenders, and survivors of sexual abuse.

4. The Democratic School (Yemen)

A Yemeni non-profit organization focused on raising awareness on human rights, child rights, and democratic values, working directly with youth, children, and women.

5.Forum for Dialogue and Participation for Development (Egypt)

A non-profit development organization promoting dialogue, participation, human rights, citizenship, and social inclusion to support institutional and community development in Egypt.

6. Mizan – The Legal Group for Human Rights (Jordan)

An independent Jordanian NGO dedicated to the protection of human rights, enhancing access to justice, promoting fair legislation, and raising public awareness about legal rights.

7. Naba’a – Developmental Action Without Borders (Lebanon)

A Lebanese organization founded in 2001. It works with Palestinian communities in camps and gatherings, as well as Lebanese communities, with a strong focus on child rights, youth empowerment, and civic engagement.

8. NADA – The Algerian Network for the Defense of Child Rights (Algeria)

Established in 2004, comprising around 100 organizations working to protect and advocate for children’s rights. NADA also provides psychological support to children.

9. Popular Aid Organization (Iraq)

A non-profit Iraqi coalition focused on child rights implementation and protection, with a strong emphasis on child participation.

10. SOUL Development Organization (Yemen)

A Yemeni organization led by a multidisciplinary team of professionals. It delivers effective and sustainable development programs for children, youth, and women.

11. QADER for Community Development (Palestine)

A Palestinian non-governmental organization working to promote the rights, inclusion, and empowerment of persons with disabilities, especially children, women, and youth, through protection, advocacy, economic empowerment, and inclusive community development programs.

12. Association Mauritanienne pour la Santé de la Mère et de l’Enfant – AMSME (Mauritania)
    A Mauritanian non-governmental organization established in 2000 that works to protect and promote the rights, health, and well-being of women and children through maternal and child healthcare, protection services, awareness raising, advocacy, and support for vulnerable communities