Child Rights Governance Getting a Better Deal for ChildrenSave the Children’s Child Rights Governance strategy 2016 - 2018

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This is the strategy for Child Rights Governance within Save the Children for the period 2016 - 2018. It looks at past and future work and includes information about the following:

• What is Child Rights Governance

• Why is Child Rights Governance important

• How has Child Rights Governance made a difference

• Three main areas of work

• Child Rights Governance and Every Last Child

• Child Rights Governance and humanitarian settings

• Child Rights Governance and cross-cutting themes

• Approaches to programming

• Signature Programmes

• Learning and evidence gathering

• Partnerships

A longer and more technical version of the strategy can be found on Save the Children’s Resource Centre, http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se.

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Millions of children around the world do not have what they need to survive and thrive because governments do not prioritise them, do not listen to them and are not held accountable when they fail them.

Our vision is a world where good governance assures the rights of every child and where every child can have a voice in governance.

Good governance means:• a government that prioritises children in its budget, that has in place the necessary systems (legal, administrative and financial) to deliver rights for all children without discrimination and who listens to children’s views, when making decisions that affect them.

• a strong and vibrant civil society able to hold government and other powerful actors to account when they deny children their rights and fail to provide the resources and services children need to survive, be protected and learn.

• empowered children able to access their rights to information, expression, association and peaceful assembly and to demand change themselves.

• a well regulated private sector that respects and supports children’s rights in its activities and operations.

Child Rights Governance (CRG) has been a global theme for Save the Children since 2011, but much of its work has been a priority since the organisation was established more than 100 years ago.

It plays a very important role in realising Save the Children’s breakthroughs on survival, learning and protection from violence. Child Rights Governance identifies and addresses the systemic and underlying factors that can help or hinder the realisation of these rights. By addressing a lack of open, inclusive and accountable governance for child rights and a lack of resources to fund obligations to children, Child Rights Governance programming helps to remove these obstacles and create conditions for long-term sustainable change.

Our goals:

• All states meet their obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and other international instruments to monitor and implement children’s rights.

• A strong civil society, including children, holds states and the international community to account for children’s rights.

WHAT IS CHILD RIGHTS GOVERNANCE?

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Children’s rights are rarely high up on political agendas and are too often violated with impunity. There is an emerging and worrying global trend to restrict civil society, leaving children and citizens unable to hold those in power to account.

Governments don’t invest enough in children’s health, learning and protection, and little data is available to find out exactly how much is being spent on children overall. Tax loopholes and ineffective tax collection systems deprive children of the resources they need.

Many countries do not have a functioning child rights system. International law makes it clear that governments have to put in place the institutions, processes and policies that enable them to fulfil their commitments to children’s rights. Many fail to do so.

Children are invisible. According to UNICEF, 290 million children globally have no birth certificate and a quarter of under-fives’ births have not been registered. Children make up more than half the population in many countries, but are rarely listened to.

The gap between rich and poor children is growing and poverty is increasingly concentrated in conflict areas. Millions of children are being forced from their homes by conflict, violence, poverty, and rapid urbanization, forcing them to live in settlements where there is little or no rule of law and where they have no access to protection or services.

WHY IS CHILD RIGHTS GOVERNANCE IMPORTANT?

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...at the national level

Since 2011, Save the Children has supported the development and adoption of comprehensive children’s acts, statutes or codes in 16 countries. These laws and policies have greatly raised the status of children’s rights at a national level.

In 2015, 20 countries reported increases in child-focused public allocations as a result of Save the Children’s budget analysis and advocacy.

In 2015, Save the Children supported 35 child rights coalitions worldwide. All of these coalitions reported that they had successfully influenced their governments to make children’s rights a priority.

Since 2013, children participated in the development of 95% of the country reports submitted to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child with support from Save the Children.

Since our work on investment in children started in 2013:

• 11 countries have greater fiscal transparency and accountability;

• 18 countries have increased children’s participation in budgeting and local government planning.

HOW HAS CHILD RIGHTS GOVERNANCE MADE A DIFFERENCE?

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...at the international level

Save the Children and our partners have played a key role in advocating for increased investment in children by influencing the world’s new global strategies for international development. These include the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda’s outcome document of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, which both recognise investment in children as vital. In particular, we provided a great deal of technical input into the development of Sustainable Development Goal 16, which now includes several targets relating to Child Rights Governance.

We supported 2,700 children in 71 countries to give their input to the UN Human Rights Council’s resolution in 2015 on investment in children. The resolution affirms that investment in children has high economic and social returns and that resources should go towards fulfilling children’s rights.

Save the Children and partners cooperated with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to adopt a General Comment on public budgets to serve as a “roadmap” for governments to realise children’s rights.

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CRG WORK FOCUSES ON THREE MAIN AREAS

1: Monitoring and demanding children’s rights, with children

2: Good governance that delivers children’s rights

3: Public investment in children

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1: MONITORING AND DEMANDING CHILDREN’S RIGHTS, WITH CHILDREN

We work with children and their communities to understand the situation of children and to speak out when children’s rights are violated. We ask that those responsible explain what they have done or failed to do, and what actions they will take to improve children’s lives.

International child and human rights monitoring mechanisms are an important tool for pushing child rights concerns up the political agenda. These mechanisms include the UN Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the European Union and various intergovernmental organisations in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. Another important tool for monitoring and demanding children’s rights is social accountability initiatives with service providers, such as schools and hospitals.

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In 2014, Save the Children and World Vision International supported a group of children to make recommendations to Albania’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR). All the issues the children raised were addressed in the UPR recommendations accepted by Albania, and the children were invited to bring their recommendations to a special parliamentary hearing.

In the lead up to the 2015 general elections in Myanmar (Burma), the #VoteForChildren campaign, spearheaded by Save the Children and Myanmar’s National Child Rights Working Group, called on political candidates to prioritise children, and asked voters to vote for those who promised they would. The campaign also organised meetings where children could voice their demands.

Since 2012, Save the Children and partners have supported children from refugee camps, and from different municipalities in Lebanon, to gather data on the situation of children’s rights in their area, to analyse this data and to present their findings to the heads of municipalities and to influential leaders within refugee camps.

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In 2016-2018 we will:

• Support children and civil society organisations to submit child-informed, high quality reports to child and human rights mechanisms, and follow up with advocacy initiatives to challenge child rights violations and push for change;

• Make sure children and their communities are able to speak out and hold governments accountable for prioritising their rights and freedoms;

• Test ‘Child-Centred Social Accountability’ as an approach to hold governments accountable for accessible, quality services to children;

• Influence the final agreement of an accountability framework for the new Sustainable Development Goals and pilot a model for how Save the Children, partners and children can use it to advance accountability for child rights;

• Put children’s rights and freedoms on the agenda of the UN, African Union, European Union and other intergovernmental organisations;

• Use the Sustainable Development Goal 16’s governance-related targets and indicators on access to information and fundamental freedoms to advocate for children’s civil rights and freedoms at all levels.

In Bangladesh, we will pilot a Child-Centered Social Accountability project, whose purpose is to increase dialogue and accountability between citizens, particularly children, and providers of services, with the aim of improving the quality of essential services for children. The project will involve children and young people in tracking and monitoring service delivery in schools and health clinics in a deprived remote rural community and in the urban slums of Bangladesh’s capital city, Dhaka. Social accountability tools to track and monitor services will be developed jointly with service providers and government authorities.

In China, we are setting up and supporting a children’s rights network with NGOs and children to monitor, review and analyse information on the situation of children’s rights in mainland China and Hong Kong. We will produce an annual child rights report, and this information will contribute to a civil society report when the government’s next reports to the UNCRC are due in 2019.

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2: GOOD GOVERNANCE THAT DELIVERS CHILDREN’S RIGHTS

To make children’s rights a reality, governments must put in place a child rights system that includes laws, policies, co-ordination mechanisms, data collection systems and accountability mechanisms. This system is made up of a number of ‘General Measures of Implementation’.

General Measures of Implementation are strategies the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has identified for governments to implement the UNCRC. They include laws, regulatory frameworks for non-state service providers, child rights impact assessments of decisions that would affect children, coordination bodies across government ministries with responsibility for children’s rights, and independent child rights complaints mechanisms. They also include a national data collection system to inform policy development, resource planning, allocation and spending, and to ensure that services are reaching the most deprived children.

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Save the Children already works in more than 45 countries to help build the systems and governance architecture needed to deliver children’s rights. Working closely with children and civil society organisations, we analyse gaps and weaknesses in Child Rights Governance and advocate with governments to improve their systems and to provide sufficient funds and qualified staff to resource it.

We campaign for laws and policies to protect the rights of all children and work with independent bodies, such as Ombudspersons, that can hold governments accountable. We also advocate for national level, disaggregated, and up to date data collection, which can help governments include the most deprived and marginalized children in their planning.

In Nepal, we worked with several national and international organisations and networks for more than seven years to get children's rights incorporated in the new Constitution. In 2015, we finally succeeded. The Constitution now includes a separate article on children’s rights, including their right to participate, and the 'best interests of the child' is one of the state’s principles.

Save the Children in the occupied Palestinian territory provided technical support to the Palestinian Authority to develop national child-rights based indicators for use in routine data collection. To ensure that the indicators were as reliable and effective as possible, this process was done in close collaboration with the government body with responsibility for gathering statistics and preparing an annual child statistics report, as well as other ministries and departments, UNICEF and civil society organisations.

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In 2016–18 we will:

• Work with civil society partners to support and advocate for governments to put in place the necessary child rights system (General Measures of Implementation) to deliver their promises to children;

• Engage with the Open Government Partnership and use this as a platform for governments to implement the Sustainable Development Goal 16’s governance-related targets;

• Advocate for law reform and adequately resourced policies that implement children’s rights to survival, learning and protection from violence;

• Push governments for greater transparency and access to information, including oversight and transparency of state budgets.

Since its establishment in 2010, the Zimbabwean Human Rights Commission has not had the resources or expertise to fulfil its legal obligation to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights. We are supporting the Commission to set up a child rights working group to strengthen their capacity to defend children’s rights.

The availability of disaggregated data on the situation of girls and boys is crucial to inform planning, allocation and spending of public funds, especially in emergency contexts. We will work with our partners in Iraq to lobby district authorities to put in place systematic and disaggregated data collection.

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Children have a right to their fair share, and we know the budget is a good indication of government priorities. In order to fulfil children’s rights, governments must invest more in children’s health, learning and protection, especially for the most deprived groups of children. They need to improve how money is spent and be more open about who benefits.

In recent years, Save the Children has developed a strong focus on investment in children in its programme, policy and advocacy work, influencing governments and international bodies to prioritise children in their budgets and fiscal policies.

We currently work with governments and citizens in more than 50 countries to increase and improve spending to help children survive, be healthy, learn and be protected from violence. When citizens, including children, are able to understand how their government spends their money they are better able to advocate for change.

Weak tax collection systems and tax evasion makes it hard for some governments to raise enough money to give all children equal opportunity. We are working with partners to ensure states increase their domestic revenue, especially from progressive taxation. We will advocate for tax loop holes to be closed and for fair financing of the global agreements for children.

3: PUBLIC INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN

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The Government of Rwanda has increased investment in children by collecting taxes more efficiently, cracking down on corruption, reforming public expenditure and decreasing its reliance on consumption taxes, partly because of Save the Children’s advocacy work. These measures have contributed to more spending on healthcare and social protection.

In 2015 in Nicaragua, children helped to draft four municipal policies for children. They also made project proposals that led to the municipalities funding and implementing 17 local projects, such as providing equipment for sports teams, bands and dance groups, improving public parks, and buying textbooks.

In Zambia, a comprehensive analysis of prioritizations and allocations in the national budget was carried out by our partners with our support in 2015. Key recommendations for enhancing pro-poor budgets and children’s budgets have been developed and shared with the government.

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In 2016–18 we will:

• Advocate for children, including those who are most deprived and excluded, to be prioritised in the mobilisation, allocation and utilisation of public resources;

• Increase our budget-tracking work to monitor and improve how public funds are spent and who benefits;

• Influence governments to introduce fairer, progressive and more transparent taxation systems and adding our voice to campaigns against tax evasion and avoidance;

• Influence how the international commitments on ‘fair financing’ for children are carried out and integrate these into national advocacy and campaign plans;

• Advocate for donors to be accountable for their official development assistance commitments to financing children’s rights;

• Support governments to put into practice the UNCRC General Comment on public budgets to realise the rights of the child;

• Urge international finance institutions, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, to increase their focus on investment in children and to address the structural problems that lead to children to being marginalised;

• Track spending and support costing of child protection interventions.

In Sierra Leone, we will continue to work with district councils and the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs to ensure that education, maternal and children’s healthcare, and child protection services are adequately funded and that the country is better prepared for any future emergencies.

Kenya enjoys a robust legal framework that encourages public participation in governance matters, including the budgeting process. We will take advantage of this favourable environment and enhance the capacities of civil society organisations, communities and children to use budget tracking tools to better influence the allocations and utilisations of funds in the education, health and social protection sectors.

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Increasingly, Child Rights Governance is becoming an integral part of Save the Children’s humanitarian work. In the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Nepal, South Sudan, Somaliland and Ethiopia, we joined forces with education, protection, health and nutrition teams to make humanitarian interventions more accountable to children and their communities. At the heart of this work are the partnerships we build between communities, governments and external actors to explore the root causes of the emergency and what can be done to prevent future disasters using local resources and capabilities.

CHILD RIGHTS GOVERNANCE AND HUMANITARIAN SETTINGS

In South Sudan, where violent conflict has resulted in the displacement of 1.6 million people, we worked with the government and other authorities, such as camp and traditional leaders, to strengthen the implementation of children’s rights. We supported civil society to speak up about specific violations of children’s rights, such as early marriage, forced conscription, sexual abuse, child labour, and access to education and healthcare.

In Nepal, in the aftermath of the April 2015 earthquake, we supported the National Human Rights Commission to organise trainings in mobile camps in 11 of the most affected districts to ensure that the situation of children was closely monitored.

In 2016–18, we will continue to work with humanitarian staff so that they understand the role that Child Rights Governance can and should play in emergencies, fragile states, natural disasters and conflict situations. We will develop specific approaches for fragile states and build the capacity of civil society, so that it can play a bigger role in Save the Children’s humanitarian work. And we will work to make humanitarian responses more accountable to children.

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The Philippines is one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries. Save the Children, Plan International and World Vision pushed together for the Children’s Emergency Relief and Protection Act to be passed. This Act requires a Comprehensive Emergency Programme to be developed, which ensures that children are well prepared, kept safe and their voices heard in any future disasters and emergencies. We will be working with civil society groups to get children’s concerns included in Disaster Risk Reduction and humanitarian response mechanisms, and to ensure that children’s rights are fulfilled during and after emergencies.

Birth registration – which is every child’s right and a critical step in protecting them and providing access to services – is too often disrupted during emergencies. In Ethiopia, we will pilot birth registration services in an emergency situation and documenting and sharing practices so that it can be applied elsewhere.

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Save the Children’s 2016–18 priority campaign, “Every Last Child”, aims to remove financial, discriminatory and accountability barriers that prevent children from surviving and thriving, and calls on leaders in all countries to make the following three guarantees to all children:

• Fair finance – we will push for public revenues to be increased, collected and spent equitably, and supported internationally. Cost barriers to public services should be removed and replaced with minimum financial security for all children.

• Equal treatment – we will advocate for laws and policies to remove discriminatory barriers to services, support public campaigns to challenge norms and behaviours, and demand registration of every birth.

• Accountability – our advocacy efforts will focus on key elements of accountability: better data disaggregation, inclusive governance at all levels, and budget transparency.

Child Rights Governance will play a crucial role in achieving these guarantees. Our focus on more and better public investment in children will support the call for fair finance. When influencing governments to align national legislation with the UNCRC, we will ensure that these legal guarantees are for all children, without discrimination. Our engagement with international human rights monitoring mechanisms, and our work around child-centred social accountability will contribute to improved accountability for children.

CHILD RIGHTS GOVERNANCE AND EVERY LAST CHILD

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In 2016–18, Save the Children’s Child Rights Governance work will contribute to improving gender equality by raising specific rights violations for girls and boys as part of the reporting process to international and regional bodies. We will advocate for governments to collect data on implementation of children’s rights that is disaggregated by gender. We will work with governments and other bodies to introduce legislation that promotes gender equality and we will ensure that girls and boys are represented equally when engaging with local and national governments and international bodies. When working on investment in children and doing analysis and advocacy around equity in spending and how the most deprived children benefit from public resource mobilisation, allocation and spending, we will have a clear focus on gender differences.

Child Rights Governance will contribute to building the resilience of institutions by incorporating children’s rights into governance systems and mechanisms, which can last even during power shifts, financial crises and emergencies. We will work to ensure that countries with ongoing conflict or crises have adequate resources and that budgeting for child-sensitive responses is included in national plans.

Over the next three years, Child Rights Governance programmes will ensure that the voluntary participation of children with disabilities is prioritised in public consultations about children’s rights. We will seek to ensure children with disabilities are visible in Disaster Risk Reduction plans and budgets and promote their rights with governments and other bodies.

CHILD RIGHTS GOVERNANCE AND CROSS-CUTTING THEMES

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Save the Children has decided that each of the five global thematic areas will produce guidance on a number of ‘key approaches’ to our programming work. This will increase consistency in how we approach Child Rights Governance issues across the organisation and ensure our work is based on best practice and robust evidence.

Save the Children has a long track record in supporting children and civil society coalitions to engage with international and regional child rights reporting mechanisms. This is a tried and tested programming approach, enhanced by years of experience. We will produce tools and guidance on how best to undertake this work and how this approach can be adapted according to context, how to collect evidence of results, and how to ensure a high quality of standard.

Child-Centered Social Accountability is a new and exciting approach to programming. There is already evidence of how social accountability can improve the delivery and quality of essential services. But we will focus on gathering evidence on the impact child-centered social accountability has on children’s survival, learning and protection from violence, by increasing dialogue and accountability between citizens, particularly children, and providers of services. Social Accountability projects are currently implemented by Save the Children and partners in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India.

APPROACHES TO PROGRAMMING

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All of Save the Children’s programmes drive towards achieving the three global Breakthroughs laid out in the global strategy. Signature Programmes are a small sub-set of those quality programmes that have been identified as having significant potential to bring about effective change.

We currently have two Child Rights Governance Signature Programmes in the pipeline. Evidence of the impact of these approaches will be strengthened over the coming year so that they are ready to be scaled up.

The Zambia investment in children Signature Programme entitled ”Children Counting First in Public Spending” was launched in 2013. Its main objective is to contribute to increased and improved public budget allocations and spending in selected Zambian districts in the education, social protection, health and nutrition, and child protection sectors. Key programme approaches include supporting meaningful participation of children and other citizens in the district planning and budgeting process, improving district authorities’ acceptance of, and responsiveness to, citizens’ demands, and encouraging children and citizens’ own monitoring, tracking and reporting on the delivery of essential services for children.

“Child Sensitive Social Protection” is a regional programme supported jointly by the Child Poverty and Child Rights Governance Global Themes. It is being implemented in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. The overall aim of the programme is to improve investment in children in order to reduce poverty and vulnerability among the poorest and marginalised children by reducing child labour, promoting school attendance, and reducing malnutrition among children.

SIGNATURE PROGRAMMES

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For Save the Children’s Child Rights Governance work to make the greatest possible contribution to the realisation of children’s rights, we will continue to focus on delivering programmes of the highest quality in 2016-18. Ongoing learning and evidence gathering plays a vital role in delivering quality.

In-depth analysis to inform quality programming

Quality programming starts with a good quality analysis of the situation of children’s rights that can be used to inform strategic programming and effective advocacy. Strengthening the analytical capacity of Child Rights Governance staff and partners will be a priority in the next strategic period so that they can carry out quality, comprehensive Child Rights Situation Analyses with a Child Rights Governance focus. Analysis findings will also serve as programme benchmarks against which to measure progress and achievements.

Measuring results

Child Rights Governance work addresses the root causes of rights violations. Positive outcomes can have multiple long-term benefits, but they are not always immediately visible. Tracking and measuring the impacts on children’s lives of Child Rights Governance programming is a lengthy and complex process. The Child Rights Governance Strategic Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (SPEL) approach has been developed to better capture how change happens, including through advocacy, monitoring and adaptation. The SPEL tool will enable us to improve programme design, monitoring and evaluation by helping to generate more systematic knowledge about all changes brought about by a programme, and track how they might contribute to better outcomes for children. In 2016, we are piloting the SPEL approach in Peru and Zambia.

Learning

The Child Rights Governance Global Theme supports peer-to-peer visits and mentoring, and facilitates on-the-job learning. There are vibrant Child Rights Governance networks in all regions where we work that allow us to consolidate learning from our programming and share resources produced at the global and regional levels. Every year, we support regional learning meetings, where Child Rights Governance staff can share experiences and benefit from learning sessions.

LEARNING AND EVIDENCE GATHERING

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The Global Theme also produces global research and policy briefings to support national, regional and international advocacy on Child Rights Governance and, where possible, produces child-friendly versions of global reports. Save the Children’s public online Resource Centre has an up-to-date library with training materials and resources related to Child Rights Governance, www.resourcecentre.savethechildren.se.

Research

We are committed to expanding the global evidence base for Child Rights Governance work. In 2016–18, the focus of our research will be on demonstrating Child Rights Governance work’s positive impact on children’s lives and in particular their survival, learning and protection. We will seek to answer questions such as how children’s participation, and more focused and transparent budget allocations have improved access to, and the quality of, services for the most deprived children.

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All Child Rights Governance programming requires close collaboration with children, civil society organisations, communities, governments and the private sector to share knowledge, influence others, and build capacity to ensure children’s rights are met. To take global commitments on investment in children and governance forward, the Child Rights Governance Global Theme will continue to take part in a range of partnerships, including the global Working Group on Investment in Children and the Transparency, Accountability and Participation (TAP) Network for implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

Other exciting new partnerships include groundbreaking research with CIVICUS and the Centre for Children’s Rights at Queen’s University in Belfast on how children experience their civil rights.

Regional organisations, such as Child Rights Coalition Asia, Redlamyc, Eurochild and the African Child Policy Forum, will be instrumental for our regional Child Rights Governance advocacy and to link national, regional and international advocacy.

PARTNERSHIPS

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Published by the Child Rights Governance Global ThemeSave the Children

First published July 2016Permission to use, copy and distribute this document partly or as a whole is hereby provided granted that due source of reference appears in all copies.

For more information please contact:Child Rights Governance Global ThemeDirector, Lene Steffen, ls@redbarnet.dkWeb: resourcecentre.savethechildren.se

If you want to read more about Child Rights Governance, please visit the Resource Centre: www.resourcecentre.savethechildren.se