- - Indicators for Children's Rights



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

To ensure effective implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, so that children really benefit from the protection it gives, practical indicators, based on reliable statistical or other data-gathering methods, are required. These must be easy to collect, interpret and use, not only for the Committee on the Rights of the Child, but also for UNICEF and specialized agencies of the United Nations as well as national governments and the NGO community.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child has called for indicators related to the various articles of the Convention, that could meet some basic requirements such as validity, objectivity, sensitivity, comparability, accuracy and disaggregation, and has appealed to the UN system, NGOs and the research community for assistance.

Childwatch International has designed a project to meet the needs expressed by the Committee that will analyze further specific needs for indicators to monitor the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and suggest how the status of the various rights could be expressed through objective data. Through a series of country case studies, the project will develop a strategy for identification and development of the appropriate indicators.

Through the involvement of national research teams in the case studies as well as in the overall development of it, the project will contribute to capacity building within child research and child welfare in the participating countries.

The results of the project will be presented in Country Case Reports, as well as a Summary Report that combines the results and experiences of the study as a whole, with recommendations for future actions and activities. A Manual on how to use selected indicators based on easily available quantitative and qualitative data in the monitoring of the Convention for use by governments, communities, NGOs and child rights advocates will also be produced.

The project is designed to fit into the overall process within the field of human rights to develop indicators for use in monitoring the various international human rights treaties, particularly the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights.

The project will also relate closely to relevant developments within the field of child welfare and child directed development assistance. In particular, experience from the process of monitoring progress towards the goals of the Plan of Action of the 1990 World Summit for Children is expected to contribute significantly to this project. Furthermore the project will draw upon the experience of UNICEF to develop indicators relevant to its mandate, as well as child related activities of other UN agencies, research institutes and non-governmental organisations.

The project will be based at the Children's Rights Centre at the University of Gent, Belgium, and coordinated by Childwatch International in close consultation with the Committee on the Rights of the Child, UNICEF and other UN agencies, the Inter-American Children's Institute, and relevant international NGOs in the field of child welfare and child directed development assistance. Provided the necessary funding, the project could start early in 1994 and extend over a two-to-three year period.

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