53. Education, and thus the right to education, has been the top priority of successive
Governments for the last 10 years. This concern took concrete form in 1999, when the Outline Act on the Education System was adopted.
54. The ultimate aim of the Outline Act was to enable all children of school age to go to school, and it therefore established an obligation to enrol all children aged between 6 and 16 in school and guaranteed basic education for all, free of charge.
55. Since then two consecutive action plans have been adopted, the first (1999-2005) to increase the capacity of Ministry of Education schools and the second (2006-2008) to consolidate the progress made under the first plan and improve quality.
56. These two action plans can be seen as Djibouti’s attempt to comply with the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Millennium Development Goals.
57. Implementation of the plans has resulted in significant progress in terms of increased gross enrolment rates and parity in basic education, and also in the administration of the education system.
58. Thus enrolment figures rose from 38,000 in 2000 to 56,395 in 2007, an average annual increase of around 5.48 per cent, while the gross enrolment rate in primary education went up from 38 per cent to 70 per cent and the number of classrooms in the first cycle of basic education rose from 560 to 922.
59. Enrolment rates in the second cycle of basic education went up from 19.6 per cent in 2000 to 43 per cent in 2007 (from 13,000 students to 29,520). A child entering school has an 85 per cent chance of obtaining the certificate of basic education.
60. None of these achievements would have been possible had it not been for the large contributions from donors, notably the Partners in Education Group (GPE), for which UNICEF currently provides secretariat services, and unwavering political determination that has taken education’s share of the State budget up from 12 per cent in 1999 to its current level of 24 per cent.
61. Despite all these developments, Djibouti must continue its efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 by increasing the number of neighbourhood primary and secondary schools, ensuring parity at all levels of education and strengthening higher education.
2. Right to food and health
62. There has been a series of policies on reform of the health sector - one of the Government’s three priority areas since 1996 - leading, in 2002, to the Strategic Framework for Health
Development to Promote and Protect the Right to Health.
63. Within this framework the Government has been able to establish a health policy to meet the needs of urban and rural populations by:
(a) Providing health coverage nationwide;
(b) Reorganizing central hospitals;
(c) Upgrading the status of the health service.
64. In addition to these legislative measures designed in accordance with the principles of equity, solidarity and protection and promotion of human health, the Government also runs national
programmes on: health policy to improve mother-child health; health, nutrition and public health
education and information; setting up a national framework and fund for orphans and children living with HIV/AIDS; making the Training Centre into a Higher Institute of Health Sciences and establishing a medical faculty in November 2007, to relieve the chronic shortages of qualified staff;
and many other programmes to combat epidemics such as cholera, malaria and tuberculosis.
65. As the decentralization policy delegating State powers to regional authorities is not fully effective, the Government’s efforts over the last 10 years have not yet had the desired impact, especially on people living in rural areas and the neediest of the urban populations.
66. As to food security, the food shortages caused by bad weather have prompted the Government to create a Food Security Office under the Office of the President and, starting in 2005, to launch numerous bilateral programmes such as leasing of arable land from neighbouring Ethiopia and Sudan, to give the population access to an adequate supply of food.
3. Right to work and social security (a) Right to work
67. Work, and its corollary, combating unemployment, is one of the Government’s major areas of action in its efforts to overcome poverty. Unemployment affects 60 per cent of the active population - mostly women and young people. This figure may be somewhat overstated as it does not take account of the informal sector, which employs large numbers of people, but it nevertheless shows how much needs to be done in terms of Djibouti’s socio-economic development.
68. In this context the Government has embarked on a coherent business, training and youth employment policy to encourage local business start-ups, which calls for all socio-economic actors (unions, employers’ organizations and civil society) to support the National Agency for
Employment, Training and Vocational Guidance in its work. Even though this policy is still in its infancy, a number of concrete initiatives have already been taken which have reduced or will reduce the rate of unemployment significantly, including:
(a) Establishment of a business start-up fund for job-seekers, with financing from Kuwait;
(b) Establishment of a job placement and retraining programme in cooperation with business and the United States of America through the Agency for International Development (USAID);
(c) Establishment of the National Agency for Employment, Training and Vocational Guidance.
(b) Social security
69. Social security must be seen as one of the most important advances for Djiboutian workers for a long time. Djibouti has two social security systems. One is for all civil servants, in which health insurance is provided by the State in return for a monthly contribution. This covers all the health costs of officials and their families, although that statement now needs qualifying as a nominal flat rate payment has been introduced to contribute to the health system’s running costs.
70. The other social security system is for private sector employees and covers all such workers.
The system is administered by an independent social security institute and provides all contributors with care and basic medicines free of charge.
71. These arrangements aside, it should be noted that the armed forces, the police and the gendarmerie each have their own special centres where members can obtain treatment for themselves and their families free of charge. Disabled war veterans also receive preferential treatment.
4. Right to housing
72. The right to housing is one of the chief concerns of the Government of Djibouti. The right is established, inter alia, in the current Outline Act on Economic and Social Policy; Act No. 82/AN/4 L of 17 May 2008 establishing the Ministry of Housing, Town and Country Planning and the Environment, and its implementing decrees; the road map given to the Government at the start of the President’s second term of office; and the Social Development Initiative.
73. The right to housing is realized through various measures, some completed, others still under way: (a) essential institutional and regulatory reforms to control urban development;
(b) development of neighbourhoods lacking amenities; (c) creation of developed areas; and
(d) construction of low-cost housing and mid- and upper-range accommodation. Town planning is a joint exercise involving the Ministry of Housing, Town and Country Planning and the Environment (which operates through its land-use, policy planning and coordination services and whose policy is based chiefly on the 1994 Master Plan for Land Use, now being updated, and its two agencies, the Djibouti Property Company, which deals with mid-range housing, and the Habitat Fund, set up recently to develop low-cost housing and provide credit facilities); the Land and Conservation Office; local authorities; and the private sector, which has lately become more and more involved in this area.
74. Although NGOs - more often known as associations - are only marginally involved in developing housing and town planning policy, they are undeniably very active locally in trying to improve the urban environment and raise people’s standard of living.
(a) Achievements
75. The Government has taken several steps to implement the right to housing. Suitable units are now being constructed as a means of reversing the ever-increasing housing deficit, currently put at around 2,500 per year (the true figure should be known after the upcoming population and housing census). Thus between 2005 and 2008 residential areas have been built at Hodane 1 (842 units), Concorde (90), Gargaar (285), Wadajir 2 - now in the final phase - (75), plus 340 units built to help resettle displaced populations in areas affected by armed conflict.
76. Further examples are Hodane 2 (642 units), Chebelley (200), where the President laid the foundation stones on World Habitat Day, Monday, 2 October 2008, and Doumeira (44), where work is to begin soon.
77. Plots of land are being made available to improve the living environment in response to the increasing demand. Thus, again between 2005 and 2008, the Government created 384 emergency suburban plots, 556 residential plots in the capital and 220 more in Arta (170 residential
and 150 social). This measure also applied to two other regional capitals in the interior, Ali-Sabieh and Tadjourah (100 plots each).
78. Cities in the interior have likewise been provided with suitable housing plots and, as in the capital, with standard designs for progressive housing as a basis for evaluation of low-cost housing projects.
79. A regulatory framework for consistency in land-use planning: regulations have been put in place in parallel with the various measures taken to promote land ownership and security. These take the form of updates to existing rules and the formulation of new rules governing land
distribution and development, and concessions for services; several new laws on the specifications and plans for various developments in Djibouti and the interior; and strengthened procedures of amicable transfer and simplified building permission in order to encourage residents of older neighbourhoods on the Djibouti peninsula (districts 1-7, Ambouli and Djebel) and in Balbala, to seek title to their property.
(b) Outlook
80. To encourage home ownership and land security, the Government proposes to create some 14,000 low-cost housing units, 3,000 progressive housing units and 800 rehabilitated plots across the country between 2008 and 2011, with help from the private sector and foreign investors.
(c) Opportunities and obstacles
81. The development of the right to housing in Djibouti is facilitated by the fact that there is land available, in the sense that it all belongs to the State and is relatively inexpensive, there are
incentives for the less well off (amicable transfer and simpler building permission procedures), and there is the political will and a clear commitment from the Government.
82. Even so, there are considerable obstacles in the way of achieving the hoped-for goal, chief among them the lack of funding at the national and international levels, the inadequacies of the institutional framework (no appropriate financial instruments such as a housing bank offering preferential schemes) and the poor capacity of departments responsible for the housing sector.