Commitment to Children Audit (CCA)
The Global Movement for Children (GMC) is leading a project to develop an outreach and advocacy tool to measure the level of commitment governments around the world have vis-à-vis children and rate them in a world ranking. This project, the Commitment to Children Audit (CCA), has the following goals:
- Generate public support;
- Draw the attention of policymakers and leaders to child rights issues;
- Strengthen leaders' commitment to child rights.
As part of this initiative, CCA has introduced an inclusive and participatory approach to developing a tool to monitor accountability on children's rights and generate public debate on the issue. The participation of child rights organisations at all levels is understood as key to making this proposed tool truly effective in holding governments to account and having a real impact. For this reason, the first draft of the project is undergoing a broad consultation process within the Movement for all constituents to contribute their feedback, amendments, and improvements. Consultation was announced to be open to national child rights organisations online until September 15 2011.
As part of this tool, countries are examined based on their economic resources and compared with others (economic and geographic neighbours) instead of tracking only progress over time. It is proposed that the CCA focus on:
- Equity: moves away from monitoring averages, instead penalising countries with big disparities.
- Commitment in relation to the level of economic resources.
- A dual analysis comprising an International Audit and a National Audit.
- Outreach: The CCA will focus on reaching out to the general public, policymakers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and leaders.
This is an advocacy effort. The first round of CCA is planned to take off in 2012 to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children (UNGASS). Initially, the project will be piloted in a few countries to then be gradually implemented in over 90 countries in the next few years. The CCA will be run globally every two years and will measure the commitment of governments' based on one major indicator per area of analysis: survival, growth, education, protection, participation, subjective well-being, and material well-being. Countries will be split into the two low-and-middle income and high-income groups and will be assessed accordingly.
Children, Rights.
As the tenth anniversary of the UNGASS approaches, the GMC looks back upon the decade since the World Fit for Children Agenda was agreed in New York in 2002 and calls for a joint assessment of the achievements made and hold governments to account on the promise of a better world to children and a reminder of the efforts needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
For further information on the CCA, you may:
- Watch the PowerPoint presentation on the CCA.
- Join the CCA Group on Facebook (you must be a member of Facebook).
- Subscribe to the GMC's monthly newsletter.
- Email the GMC Secretariat: communications@gmfc.org
GMC is led by a coalition of organisations and networks focused on children composed at a global level by ENDA Tiers Monde, Plan International, REDLAMYC, Save the Children, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and World Vision, which together make up the Convening Committee. At a regional level, the GMC is led by the Regional Platforms which are in turn integrated by national platforms of organisations working with child rights.
Emails from Noemí Torrelles to The Communication Initiative on August 4 2011 and September 1 2011.