This is to invite you to participate in The Road to Pratolino, an online discussion forum and its companion, this blog, that will run from November 2011 to February 2012, and which will inform the strategies that will be formulated at the Pratolino IV Consultation, to be held on 21-24 February 2012 in Italy.
UNICEF has a long tradition of involving its staff and partners in influencing development agendas to advance children’s rights and equity. In recent years, UNICEF has devoted major efforts to mainstream children’s rights through child-focused development policy, advocacy and partnerships. The organization is currently engaged in social budgeting in 111 countries, social protection in 88 countries, child poverty/disparities analysis in 55 countries, and policy reforms in 44 countries. These initiatives have led to positive policy changes and outcomes for children and their families.
Today, as the world is confronted with a recession of unprecedented proportions, growing inequalities and the challenge of climate change, UNICEF needs to re-energize its strategy to respond in the best interest of children, especially those most disadvantaged. For this purpose, we seek and welcome the participation of a wide spectrum of UNICEF staff, partners and external experts in this important reflection and brainstorming in the coming months.
The forum will explore new themes for a forward looking agenda, building on key areas of our work. Below are brief synopses of the key themes and some suggested key issues for discussions:
Key themes
Suggested issues for discussion
- A recovery for all: Turning crisis into opportunity for children
- The world we want: Promoting equitable and sustainable development for children
- Refocusing on equity for children in middle-income countries
Suggested issues for discussion
Through its work on social policy, UNICEF has a tremendous opportunity to make a difference in promoting equitable outcomes for children in all countries, particularly in six core areas: situational analysis of children; building institutional capacity to safeguard children’s and women’s rights; support to periodic reporting process on treaties, notably the CRC; providing technical advice and advocacy, focusing on persistent inequalities; supporting pilot activities and innovations that inform national policy; and leveraging domestic resources to promote children’s rights. Enhancing our activities in these areas will be vital to realize gains at scale for some of the world’s most deprived children. Key questions for discussion may include:
- How to bring children’s priority needs front and centre into national development policies?
- How to engage in national fiscal and budget policymaking process to increase investments in children?
- How to ensure social protection initiatives are lasting and geared towards building systems?
- How to promote economic and financial policies that are socially inclusive and promote equitable outcomes?
- How to engage in strategic advocacy and partnerships that can promote sustainable, equitable and inclusive child and human development?
Participants are welcome to put forward other topics or emphasis that may be relevant for UNICEF’s future policy work, as comments on this blog or through network discussions.
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How to post a comment:
1. Click on the comment link below
2. In the 'Comment as', choose 'Name/URL'
3. Include there your name and institution affiliation
4. In the URL you can put: http://roadtopratolino.blogspot.com/
Please note that comments are moderated (to avoid spam) and may take a while to appear.
View all the comments here
How to engage in strategic advocacy and partnerships that can promote sustainable, equitable and inclusive child and human development?
ReplyDeleteI have worked 8 years with Caritas Niger in West Africa, in partnership with several international organizations including UNICEF. The program I directed during the last 4 years of my career with Caritas Niger was conceived for at-risk youth to address the issues of child trafficking, prostitution, and economic exploitation.
Based on my field experience, including children in promoting sustainable and equitable development has to start with more community involvement/empowerment. Governments have too much power, and community too limited power. Policies have to develop a check and balance system to share the power between governments, NGOs and communities. Strategies need to involve more communities and grassroots for a bottom up capacity building. Children should also be associated and more engaged, using schools and youth based-organizations. They should be allowed and encouraged to reflect on their interests, come up with small projects, and execute those projects with the help of community members and community building workers. That will boost their engagement/participation, leadership skills, and will empower them to take action.
Dear Colleagues, thanks for the opportunity. It would be very useful to have the thoughts of a wider range of colleagues on UNICEF's work in Middle Income Countries on how we can be more strategic partners to Governments and indeed influence key processes that impact the lives of children. I know we have HQs issued guidelines on working in MICs but it is always very useful to hear about specific experiences from colleagues.
ReplyDeleteHow with our limited human and financial resources we can influence decision-makers in what can often be a very complex, large, sophisticated, rapidly changing and decentralized context with great disparities? What are some of the success stories which we can learn from in this regard? In which MIC countries have we seen tangible reduction in disparity and what have been the key factors behind it and what was the role UNICEF was able to play? What from that success is attributable to UNICEF's work? Brazil is often brought as an example of a "new" model of development that has/is reducing disparities and I know that UNICEF Brazil has been doing very innovative work for many years? It would be great to hear from colleagues in Brazil, for example, what from that wide range of work they would say now, in retrospect, has been most strategic, most influential and really contributed to some of the macro-level improvements in the country? I look forward to hearing also from other colleagues their experiences in this regard.
We in Indonesia, in the past couple of years, have been moving in this direction through our work, for example, on 1) equity and child poverty related studies, partnership building and advocacy efforts 2) child budgeting awareness-raising and development of local partnerships & adapted tools as well as integrating children's issues into existing Government planning frameworks 3) working increasingly on Social Protection/Poverty Reduction and putting children at the center of these programmes and discourses with key partners 4) of course working on improving the "evidence-base" on children through various studies, MICS in Papua and West Papua, DevInfo etc. and 5) building strategic and longer-term partnerships with the academia/think tanks/"knowledge" networks and hubs in an effort to support the country's "knowledge sector" and support appropriate linkages with the decision-making process.
Of course, so much more remains to be done and in order to be selective and strategic in future choices that we will make with our limited resources in this regard, it would be great to hear from other colleagues.
Thanks, Niloufar (UNICEF, Indonesia)
Dear colleagues, I would like to highlight some of the key trends currently taking place in the national debate here in Senegal and what, as UNICEF staff, I expect from the organization as clear future goals in this respect. In the context of poor governance, the main challenge for a UNICEF Country Office is how to advocate and promote equitable and inclusive development strategies in a fast changing environment.
ReplyDeletePopulation growth and youth unemployment: As in many countries, the Senegalese population experienced recently, and will continue to experience, impressive growth and in particular in the youth cohort, who will in the very near future enter the labor market. It seems that nearly all of this growth is occurring in the least developed part of the country. This rapid population growth puts pressure on the economy as governments struggle to provide education and health services. How can UNICEF promote education for all children without advocating for increased employment opportunities for the future youth? Will UNICEF work on vocational training, work and welfare for all families? Experience has shown us that education for girls; legal reform and access to family planning have made a difference in many countries. Is UNICEF going to have a clear position on the subject of family planning? These trends are likely to be exacerbated by the effects of climate change and its impact on the scarcity of the basic food basket, making the future survival status of all these mothers and their children even more precarious.
Urbanization: Population growth and ongoing decreased access to farmland are already creating huge migrations, especially that of children, from the rural areas to cities. There are thus new challenges for UNICEF to promote delivering basic social services for these new urban populations. Moreover, the current process of urbanization is gradually weakening traditional family patterns that provided solidarity and social roles for youth. Migration and urbanization have both separately and jointly been pinpointed as contributing to the destabilization of the value that in the past sustained younger children in a closely knit, age-integrated African society. The shift from the traditional economy, which maintained the cohesion and stability of the family, to a modern economy is now causing physical separation of family members, often literally by great distance. Traditional family and ethnic solidarity are currently disappearing but no state is strong enough to replace them. Should mapping and monitoring social cohesion be one of the challenges for UNICEF in the future?
Persistence of and growing inequalities: How should UNICEF position itself to fight social injustice and promote equal opportunities? The rise in income inequality is quite well-documented at the national level and shows a trend of general increase of differences in income available to individuals and families. Income-related inequalities, notably in the ownership of capital and other assets, in access to a variety of services and benefits, and in the personal security that money can buy, are growing. There is also greater inequality in the distribution of opportunities affecting a disproportionate number of people at the lower end of the socio-economic scale. The inequality gap between the richest and poorest households is growing as well. Do these facts and trends suggest a regression in social justice? Today, with the impact of the economic crisis, the enormous gap in the distribution of wealth, in the income redistribution from the state (through taxes) and in public benefits (through the access to social services) are growing ever wider, reflecting a general trend that is morally unfair, politically unwise and economically unsound. Is social protection the solution to all this? How can UNICEF promote a strategic approach? And finally, in this changing context how will we measure child poverty and well-being?
Kind regards, Remy (UNICEF Senegal)
After the Cannes G20: UNICEF’s contribution to the global dialogue on the social impact of economic policies
ReplyDeleteThis short note is prompted by my acceptance of the invitation to become a member of UNICEF’s Social and Economic Policy Advisory Board. The main purpose is to provide advice about UNICEF’s future Social and Economic Policy work. This note offers advice on the role UNICEF should play in the context of the global dialogue now taking place concerning the current economic crisis. My contribution follows from my earlier characterization in Global Social Policy and Governance of the system of global social governance as being one within which international organizations competed with each other for the right to shape global social policy and for the content of that policy. That analysis was prompted mainly by the observation that the World Bank primarily but to some extent also the IMF competed with the appropriate UN social agencies; ILO, UNESCO, WHO, UNICEF to shape global and national labour, education, health and child welfare policies. At certain points in the 1980 and 1990s and in certain fields such as pension policy there was something amounting to a war of positions between certain actors. During the last few years and in the context of multiple attempts to rethink global economic policy in the wake of the crisis this and in the context of a general desire to move beyond a flawed Washington Consensus the call has arisen for more effective cooperation between such agencies. Global policy synergy is now at the top of the agenda.
One very important conclusion of the path breaking Cannes G20 summit was the call made in paragraph 31.
“We call on international organizations, especially the UN, WTO, the ILO, the WB, the IMF and the OECD, to enhance their dialogue and cooperation, including on the social impact of economic policies, and to intensify their coordination”
In my view this does not imply a reversion to a neat division of labour where WHO does health, UNESCO does education and the IMF does fiscal policy for example. It rather calls for more intense discussion between the authorized social agencies on the one hand and those primarily concerned with the trade and the economy on the other so that in future global and national economic and trade policies are developed so that economic activity returns to its rightful place as the servant of sustainable social goals. The need is to re-inject the concerns of the real economy (jobs) and to re-inject social concerns (child wellbeing for example) into the consideration of economic policy.
-- see part II of this comment below
Part II:
ReplyDeleteWhat does this imply for UNICEF (and indeed other UN social agencies). It implies a reversion of what I had earlier suggested was a mission creep of the World Bank and IMF into the territory of the social. Now what is required is a reverse mission creep of the social agencies into the territory of the economic. Conventional pure economic analysis and forecasting and modeling have been found wanting. Debates about alternatives are now the order of the day. UNICEF has a long and honorable tradition in the regard. The work of Richard Jolly and his colleagues published as Adjustment with a Human Face did a huge service in the 1980s and 1990s in drawing attention to some of the negative social consequences of the economic orthodoxy of the time. The excellent initiative, with which UNICEF colleagues have been centrally involved, of launching the email dialogue on Recovery with a Human Face follows in that same tradition. It has attracted the interest and contributions of some of the world’s best economists. Recent UNICEF papers pointing to the negative social impacts of current post-crisis IMF interventions in countries are very valuable. My point is that there is now a need for the social agencies to engage directly with the economic to refashion overall economic and social policy that works in tandem. For the sake of the children the job of economics can be left to the economists. The social agencies have to gear themselves up to be able to address the economic.
The developments at the Oslo conference where the IMF and the ILO came to some kind of understanding that there should be more cooperative work to ensure that there was fiscal space within countries for social expenditures is the kind of development which needs to be built upon with UNICEF and other social agencies as a partner too. This is what I believe the Cannes Communiqué implies. Finally we need to address the argument that rather than in dialogue with the IMF progressive thinkers should put their efforts into working with the more legitimate context of the UN General Assembly and its ECOSOC and Commissions. Alas this has been and is being done but to no effect. The UN Stiglitz- lead working party produced excellent work but it was addressed to a powerless agency. Again the lesson of Cannes is that such work has to go on there and in the way it has called for: enhanced dialogue and cooperation between the IMF/World Bank/WTO and the UN social agencies.
Bob Deacon
Unicef’s role in international policy thinking of social and economic justice
ReplyDeleteWhat we all wish for is a socially just and equitable economic and social order. What we are seeing instead is an increasingly polarised economy at the global, regional and national levels, and societies characterised by intersecting exclusions, resentment and even racism. What can we do and what could Unicef be doing? That is the challenge thrown to us by our Unicef colleagues in NY in this discussion group.
Unicef has a unique and powerful mandate, the rights of the child. Of the world’s population of now 7 billion people, about one third - an estimated 2.2 billion – are under 18 years old. They are children. As per the commitments of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention of the Rights of the Child, all children, in South and North, and their parents and caretakers, have a right to dignity and to decision making, to a proper income, and to public goods such as high-quality education and health services, and well-equipped amenities such as water and sanitation, electricity, and affordable access to the media and to transportation.
Governments do acknowledge that they are in charge of providing public goods, and that they have obligations to guarantee human rights and social inclusion and empowerment. Many governments have put commitments to deliver into their constitutions and parliamentary proceedings and even into their economic and fiscal planning. Governments are increasingly under pressure, because civil society and the media have become more outspoken and because it is strikingly clear, notably since the massive public bailouts of private banks in 2008/2009, that the resources to provide public goods, services and transfers are available, if only societies so decide.
Voices of pressure for social and economic justice increasingly come from outside the UN system, from think tanks, from CSOs, and from the public at large, such as in the ‘We are the 99%’ movement. One wonders, where is the UN? Where is Unicef? So the question on Unicef’s role in this constellation is a valid one. In my view, it is to move into policy mode and get back ‘ahead of the curve’, as Richard Jolly once described the intellectual influence of the early UN.
There are at least three big policy areas where Unicef expertise, engagement and influence are needed.
The first is obvious and straightforward: insisting on government provision of core public goods: basic incomes and social services. The international community has begun reflections on the MDGs “post 2015”, and there is an emerging consensus that the MDGs need to move beyond their limited agenda of merely decreasing hunger or mortality rates or increasing school enrolment, into a universalist mode – all children have the right to enjoy good nutrition and health and high quality education and learning. That is their human right, and, in light of global aggregate wealth, is achievable. The momentum created by the global social floor movement – staking a claim for basic social services and basic income for all – shows the direction (see the eloquent Bachelet Report). Unicef can be the provider of the moral argument for universal access to health, education, social protection, and give evidence on its efficacy. It can also be a provider of pushback against the misguided resurgence of fiscal austerity packages that are hollowing out the quality and quantity of public goods and services, and make the case for redistributive tax polices at country and international levels.
--see part II of this comment below
Part II:
ReplyDeleteBut that is not enough. There is also a strikingly clear connection between the MDGs and sustainable development, and the necessity to combine a brake on the ecological footprint of the OECD world with the need to accelerate MDG achievement for all (See the juxtaposiiton of the human HDI and each country’s “footprint”). Here, it would be useful if Unicef would get involved at the international policy level. Its mandate of child rights is perfect for such engagement, since this policy area is squarely about the wellbeing prospects of future generations, and needs to pay special heed to the interests of people living in environmentally fragile situations.
But that is not enough either. The universal social floor and the sustainable development agendas are inspiring. However, they are weak on a key component of the human condition – dignified livelihoods, and decent employment for all adults who are well. This means enabling individuals to unfold their talent and creativity, with proper remuneration, guaranteed income streams, a right to organise and bargain at the workplace, minimum age and workplace safety regulations, and the security of social protection for situations of unemployment, accident, ill health, or phases of child bearing and family care, for all, be they employed or self-employed, in South and North.
This last point requires that policy stances be formulated in a vast range of domains: international trade and investment policies – which define how global production chains work; agriculture and commodity price policies and regulations regarding international property rights; land rights that determine the productivity and returns on investment in the rural economy; and also international financial regulations which establish the mechanics of financial flows, and fiscal and monetary policy.
Imagine the traction that multilateral or international negotiations would get if Unicef were to team up with the IMF and regional development banks to help determine progressive monetary policy and effective measures to curb the pernicious financial speculation, building on UNICEF work on crisis recovery. Imagine the effect if Unicef turned up at the Doha development round to speak on the harmful impact of agriculture subsidies in OECD countries on food production in the South and the interconnected lack of access to nutritious food, or took a stance on intellectual property rights that primarily serve TNCs’ corporate - instead of people’s - interests. Imagine if Unicef had a position on global processing chains (see Pascal Lamy, Globalization of the Industrial Production Chains and Measuring International Trade in Value Added), and developed policy proposals for fair wages - so that parents can make a dignified and decent living, and sweatshops and child labour disappear (see for example Auret van Heerden: Making global labor fair). Imagine the impact if Unicef took up the issue of land grabbing that increasingly displaces families from land and land-based resources, in a sad collusion between emerging international economic powers and local elites. (See Olivier de Schutter, The World Trade Organization and the Post-Global Food Crisis Agenda. Putting Food Security First in the International Trade System).
These areas, some will argue, are beyond the scope of Unicef’s mandate. But that is precisely the current challenge. Unicef alone cannot create a socially just and equitable economic and social order. But the time is ripe for Unicef to move ahead of the curve and speak with confidence, evidence and passion in international fora on international policy decisions that affect the world's 7 billion people, and the 2.2 billion children among them.
Gabriele Koehler
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteFollowing the invitation to contribute to the UNICEF Pratolino Consultation, please find below four points for consideration.
Best regards,
Sarah Hague
Chief Social Policy, UNICEF Burkina Faso
Programming for results: monitoring plus
A central topic to current development debate is that of improved monitoring for results; we know that better monitoring is crucial for proving our results and being accountable to our beneficiaries. UNICEF still has some way to go in strengthening and mainstreaming basic monitoring and evaluation mechanisms; systems that go beyond outputs, estimate wider impacts, and consider sustainability beyond the end of our project funding.
However, polishing our logframes and sharpening our indicators is far from enough. As well as monitoring our results, we need to be programming for results in the first place. We need to ensure that we are learning from our monitoring and feeding this back into our programming and advocacy. Are we looking critically at what we achieve and adjusting our interventions or do we simply produce more of the same? Are we motivated to learn from experience, acknowledge errors, and embrace new approaches, or are we constrained by immovable deadlines, pre-populated response boxes, and a lack of interest from management and donors?
In an increasingly resource constrained world, when the quest for high-impact, proven results is intensifying, UNICEF needs to demonstrate that it is learning, evolving and innovating. We have to ensure that our programming is context specific, adaptive and that it is genuinely supporting local entities to do the development business themselves on a more sustainable, national basis. Regardless of what hot topics we pick for discussion in the Pratolino meeting, we should ask ourselves whether our current incentive structures really promote programming for results, or whether all our matrices and traffic lights simply focus us on the short-team and superficial.
Programming for results: an equity-focused strategy in practice
Part of our success in achieving results must clearly be linked to the application of a more equity-focused strategy within our country programmes. We can all quickly point out the inequities prevalent in our country, tending to categorise population groups – of girls, children with disabilities, orphans, and so on. These are the groups we consider are missing out and which need to be prioritised to reach their full potential, just as the CRC outlined over 20 years ago. But in practice, this is not enough to form the basis of an effective, efficient equity-focused strategy. We are missing two things.
Firstly, and coming back to the point on learning from results, programmes are finding it challenging to effectively assess the evidence and analysis and feed programme results back into programming. Numerous population groups, which may often represent tiny proportions of the national population, all seem to merit our attention at once. In some cases, these groups are not the poorest – for example, according to the last MICS in Burkina Faso, Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVCs) are actually better off slightly than non-OVCs. In other cases, our projects support interventions that are so narrowly targeted, little evaluated, and barely changed in years that their real equity-impact is unclear. And indeed, the 2010 global review of UNICEF evaluation reports points out that "only 9% of reports included equity issues to a satisfactory level".
Additionally, a fuller appreciation of the evidence on chronic poverty and inequities, and a better understanding of the evidence behind UNICEF’s briefing note on “narrowing the gaps”, should lead us to pay more attention to poverty determinants overall and demand-side barriers in each country context. Instead of considering whether a child fits into a specific group or not, we might rather determine what the characteristics of exclusion and chronic poverty actually are and take a more holistic approach to programming.
Continued below...
..continued from my post above.
ReplyDeleteLeveraging impact through social accountability and information dissemination
A third area that we might consider more deeply is that of mobilising national change from the community-level up. Although work in some areas, such as community healthcare initiatives, is well advanced there are a number of opportunities that remain less explored or very superficial. In Burkina Faso, we have just launched the country’s first ever Public Expenditure Tracking Survey, in the primary education sector, which will provide valuable, national information on whether resources are effectively reaching schools. Following careful technical assistance and solid government ownership, we hope to turn this central-level project into a powerful community-level mechanism for participation and empowerment. But to really have an impact, this dissemination phase needs rather to be a major project, delivering not just a few workshops and publications but leveraging social accountability mechanisms that can effectively and sustainably create change from the bottom-up.
Speaking out with a louder voice
Lastly, I believe that our policy work and the evidence that we produce around it would have far greater impact if we spoke out a little more often. Both at the global level and at the national level, we should be strategically picking the right moments for the right battles. I don’t mean that we should offend partner governments, or alienate serious global bodies, but that we should use our weighty reputation to step up occasionally, backed by evidence, and push the debate in the right direction. Recently, UNICEF Burkina Faso, as the country’s lead partner in social protection, drafted a briefing and letter for the Prime Minister following the introduction of subsidies; the briefing highlighted how the subsidies benefitted the better-off and then used partner research to highlight the more pro-poor impact of removing certain healthcare fees instead. The note was communicated through government, who used it to feed into the new national policy on social protection and, having ended the subsidies, are now assessing how to target such mechanisms better.
At the global level, our voice on the equity agenda last year was powerful. We should continue to contribute at the forefront of development debate, particularly when the post-MDG agenda is being designed, and at a time when global development cooperation seems most at threat from austerity measures, protectionism, and increasing security concerns.
Dear colleagues,
ReplyDeleteSome thoughts from Mozambique, which are part of a more elaborate note on the need to build more synergies between social policy and public management. Good luck in the Patrolino discussion!
Common excuses – common solutions for goals not achieved
One of the key goals of governments is to deliver goods, services and obligations that improve the welfare of their citizens. But what if these goals are not being achieved? Or realized at a very slow pace? Common culprits are: lack of funds, lack of capacity, or need for reforms/policies. In response, proposed ‘solutions’ tend to be: more aid, more training, and more - or better implementation of - (imported) policies and reforms (Pritchett, Woolcock and Andrews 2010). However, these shortcomings can also be signs of ‘dysfunctional bureaucracies.’
Dysfunctional bureaucracies
Dysfunctional bureaucracies happen when “services fail to meet policy objectives or to deliver value for money, particularly for vulnerable people” (Turbitt, Mathias and De Jong 2010). And services fail for many reasons that go beyond lack of aid or capacity. Sometimes services fail because of administrative bottlenecks in the service delivery chain, lack of clarity in competences among different levels of government, red tape, lack of incentives among civil servants, corruption, etc.
UNICEF tends to overlook these issues of dysfunctional bureaucracies. We tend to focus more on the social outcomes we want to see achieved without necessarily analyzing how these goals will be achieved.
Balancing social policy and public management
Social policy helps us define social outcomes. But it needs to be complemented - and balanced - by a focus on public management – which tries to answer how social outcomes will be achieved - and whether there’s enough absorptive capacity to do so. And to determine the how, one needs to look carefully at public administration (and its nature, regulations, incentives, etc), as well as the political economy in a given country.
Public management helps us identify the extent of available resources and existing authority to pursue those goals. When there’s a mismatch between goals sought and availability of resources/authority, there’s a need to re-think priorities and sequence the achievement of social outcomes. There’s also a need to engage in creating networked government solutions to both expand the pool of available resources and authority (Moore 2010).
Ambitious goals vs. sustainability
Many academics have drawn attention to the perils of being too ambitious in pursuing social outcomes at the detriment of sustainability (Prichett, Woolcock and Andrews 2010, Clemens 2004). Yet development practitioners (often under pressure to show results) tend to forget these important lessons...
Follow the service delivery chain…
UNICEF doesn’t always follow the flow of service delivery chain (from central level > to front line service providers and ultimately > to rights holders). Instead, we tend to opt for upstream policy level work (often using imported good practices as solutions). Or support downstream service delivery, without necessarily paying attention to the absorption and institutional capacity of national systems, and other bottlenecks in middle of the service delivery chain. Identifying and addressing bottlenecks in ‘dysfunctional bureaucracies’ are important requirements for sustainable development.
“Only when one has genuinely understood the problem and what kind of help is needed, can one even begin…”
Warm regards, Natalia UNICEF Mozambique
Poor Countries or Poor Children?
ReplyDeleteRefocusing on equity for children in middle-income countries
In 1990 the overwhelming majority of child malnutrition, child mortality, children out of primary school and children without immunization was situated in low-income countries (LICs). Today things are more complicated. The majority of child poverty by these various dimensions are situated in middle-income countries (MICs) and for the most part Lower-MICs, rather than the world’s poorest countries (See here, here, here, here and here).
Indeed, there are only 35 remaining LICs (and surprisingly a third of Least Developed Countries are now MICs too). Further, the growth projections of Moss and Leo suggest the number of countries classified as LICs will continue to drastically fall to about 20 in 2025 suggesting the changes in the global distribution of child poverty are likely to continue.
What happened? Much child poverty is concentrated in a small number of countries many of whom have got better in average income terms but absolute numbers of poor children by various measures didn’t fall that much (although the incidence as a percentage may have fallen).
Further, many of the Lower-MIC countries where global child poverty is concentrated have average income at a national level at MIC-levels but with large inequalities.
For example spatially - many large MICs are actually collections of provinces or regions with MIC-level average income and MIC-level IMR rates in urban provinces and capitals, together with LIC-like income per capita and IMR rates in other regions. For example, a number of states in India has per capita income at Sub-Saharan Africa levels even though average income in India is $1200 per person (exchange rate) and $3000 per person (PPP). Maps are good ways of demonstrating this issue (see India, here).
Furthermore, many of the poor children in MICs may live in such poorer provinces where growth and governance are weaker and social inequalities may compound access to public services.
Regardless of whether one accepts the LIC-MIC thresholds as sensible, countries are getting rich in average per capita terms and child poverty isn’t falling as fast as one might hope.
What the emergence of a larger group of MICs – almost 30 over the last decade - does mean is aid as resource transfer is becoming less significant over time to many countries as domestic resources evolve.
This doesn’t mean UNICEF and other donors should simply pull out of MICs on the basis that child poverty in those countries with substantial domestic resources isn’t their problem (although the EU, and the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria are signaling such a move).
-- Comment continues below
--continued from above:
ReplyDeleteContinued donor relationships with MICs are justified on the grounds of: high levels of exclusion and inequality; domestic constraints (e.g. inadequate tax systems); need for technical expertise; and international and regional public goods.
What it means is that global child poverty is increasingly turning from an international to a national distribution problem, means that UNICEF and other donors have an ‘upstream’ role to play as child advocates and increasingly, having difficult conversations on issues beyond money such as governance and domestic taxation and redistribution policies which becoming more important to child poverty reduction than ‘traditional aid’. Indeed, new MICs may not want or need development assistance of the ‘traditional’ sort.
Aid to low-income countries will still be about resource transfers and increasingly about fragility, conflict, and post-conflict, but this will be for a minority of countries.
The shift in the distribution of global child poverty can be viewed in three possible ways.
First, that it’s all a sleight of hand – the world’s poor children still live in ‘poor’ countries, albeit slightly less poor than before.
Second, that it is ‘business as usual’ because there are limits to domestic taxation on the rich and expanding middle classes in MICs.
Or third, that this shift could mean a fundamental reframing of global child poverty is required, as UNICEF’s ‘MDG with equity’ work already suggests, there are growing disparities and poverty is about distribution questions relating to now equity/inclusion/exclusion suggesting the importance of advocacy coalitions for children which UNICEF has a leading role.
Working on equity related issues will inevitably lead to more political tension - on spending priorities, political voice – meaning external development actors such as UNICEF will need more political analysis and ‘drivers of change’ type analysis.
The poor, and children in particular, will often lack a voice in governance structures, and their governments may lack political will, even when domestic resources are on the rise.
In such cases, UNICEF and other donors might seek to direct their activities towards supporting inclusive policy processes and the media, social movements, advocacy groups and civil society organizations.
Doing so may not always be well received by MIC governments; many of them will be donors themselves and perhaps less interested in ‘progressive (domestic) change’ and more in their foreign and economic policy interests.
One main area of agreement might be in global public goods, where interest in collective action on vaccines for example as well as security, climate change, and other global issues is shared.
Andy Sumner
Dear colleagues, Andy is absolutely spot-on. I have been working in a Middle Income Country (an upper-MIC as of this year) for two-three years. We have (almost) no donors, (almost) no international staff, yet a vital and continuing role to advocate for change in policies, budgets, expertise and attitudes.
ReplyDeleteUNICEF needs to be leading the change of aid modality as countries are changing their economic make-up. And we are well-placed to do so, having taken on the rubric of equity in everything we do. It is precisely the pursuit of equity that we need to focus also on in Middle-Income Countries. If MICs contain more than half the world's children in poverty (as they do), and yet also have the world's richest children, then disparities are clearly evident and deplorable. But as MICs attract less and less donor assistance, and have more and more of their own resources to dispose of, what we do changes to advocating, advising and supporting the country to embrace all children and assure their development rather than finding donor funding to support service delivery. We should also, as conditions permit, be supporting the strengthening of civil society such that it can ultimately take over much of the role we currently need to play, which - once it happens - will mean our role will solely be the broker of international knowledge and expertise. The other major role we have to play is to support (development of capacity in Government and civil society to support) change in attitudes and behaviours, in the general population and specific groups, because in many MICs social change is outpaced by economic progress.
Mark Hereward, UNICEF Azerbaijan
Thinking of children’s rights over the last 20 years one story stands out: that of Iqbal Masih, who escaped brutal slavery at 10, joined the Bonded Labor Liberation Front of Pakistan, helped free 3000 children from bonded labor, became a worldwide spokesperson against child labor and was murdered in 1995 at age 13.
ReplyDeleteThat Iqbal’s brief life was not forgotten is largely due to other children. When the 7th graders of Broad Meadows Middle School (Quincy, MA), to whom he had spoken about his life, learned of his death, they launched a fund raising campaign and built a school in Pakistan in his honor. Canadian Craig Kielburger, then 12, was so moved by Iqbal’s life that he founded the NGO Free the Children which has to-date built over 650 schools and school rooms and implemented projects in 45 developing countries. In 2009, the US Congress established the annual Iqbal Masih Award for the Elimination of Child Labor. In the last 20 years, Iqbal and Craig may have done more for the world’s children than any other human being.
If UNICEF can succeed better at bringing children into the struggle for children’s rights, it might become much more effective in the pursuit of its goals. Politicians, corporations, media, banks and armies will all find it very hard to persist in injustice against which children are determined to raise their voices. Not qualified to vote, children still have a — largely untapped — potential to play a powerful role in politics, especially for the cause of children worldwide.
To make this happen, children must understand and act. Understanding can probably best be promoted through schools. UNICEF could design appropriate teaching materials and recruit suitable volunteers to take these materials into schools that do not yet have anyone willing and able to take this on. These materials should, of course, describe childhood hardships. But they should also explain why such deprivations persist, focusing especially on causal factors “close” to the learners being addressed. Children in developing countries might learn about child malnutrition and deficits in health care and sanitation in their country or about why many of their generation do not have a chance to go to school. Children in OECD countries might learn about the string of broken ODA promises, odious debts to (former) dictators, embezzlement facilitated by banks in affluent countries, local firms employing child labor in their supply chains, food imports from countries in which children are starving, the exclusion of poor children from advanced medicines through intellectual property rights or our role in magnifying the burdens of children in the developing world through pollution and global warming. Such materials should also prompt pupils to think about realistic possibilities of progress, esp. ones that they themselves might help promote. Efforts toward informed helping might often be the most appropriate, esp. in undemocratic societies where criticism is fraught with danger. In democratic countries, on the other hand, even a politically confrontational course (e.g., organizing opposition against the government or a domestic corporation to stop the import of goods made with child labor) might reasonably emerge.
After a few start-up years, the semi-autonomous UNICEF arm I envision (named perhaps Children for Children or CFC) would be largely self-sustaining as children and young adult CFC veterans would spread the message further, network across national borders, organize events etc. In terms of prestige and acceptance, CFC would greatly benefit from UNICEF sponsorship which would give CFC a substantial head-start over Kielburger’s Free the Children. UNICEF would maintain ties with the various CFC chapters to ensure basic coherence of message and goals. CFC could help raise funds for UNICEF, of course, but might also raise money for its own projects which might then benefit from UNICEF expert advice and connections.
This rough sketch evidently needs more input — plus, if it gets off the drawing board, a lot of learning by doing.
The extractive industries are the most important developmental opportunity and challenge in Mozambique today. There is great potential for the coal, gas and other mineral resources to act as a driver for development. Tete province, the current centre of mining exploration and production, is already one of the poorest provinces in the country with 60% of children experiencing deprivation-based poverty. The mining sector is already causing substantial price inflation in the province, particularly for food, which will impact poverty rates and the nutritional status of children. Families in resettlement areas indicate even less access to basic health services and education, while long term environmental effects may lead to even more precarious livelihoods for the populations in and around the mines for years to come.
ReplyDeleteWe are developing a strategy to protect children and their families from any harmful impacts of the extractive industries, including those that may arise from relocation and resettlement of communities, the environmental impacts of exploration and extraction of resources and ensure their access to justice. At the same time our long term partnerships, with the Ministries of Finance and Planning, IFIs and donor partners have us well positioned to engage on the potential allocations of national wealth created by the extraction of non-renewable natural resources through high quality Government social development programmes. Our strategic entry point in advocacy to date has been linked to ensuring all Mozambican children and their families benefit equitably from their "national inheritance." This line of thinking leads to significant questions of how UNICEF can place children into the core components of conglomerate project financing? If $700 million for a “domestic stability payment” to the Government of Guinea can be absorbed into Rio Tinto’s costs of doing business, where is our “ask” for children? If constructing a deep water port and railway line of several hundred kilometres from scratch is any indication of the “get it done” attitude of Rio Tinto in Mozambique…how do we support Government to be ready at the negotiating table? While the World Bank estimates tax revenue flows from coal exports to begin in approximately 2022, due to current tax depreciation policies in place, we hope to lay the groundwork for an appropriate “ask” for the children of Mozambique–an “ask” that will attempt to mirror the 50 year expected lifespan of the mines and the corresponding hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in mining infrastructure. One specific idea is the development of a system for frontloading EI tax revenues for children by introducing a Three Dollar Extractive Tax for Children, i.e. three US dollars per ton of coal or cubic ton of natural gas, among other extracted resources. Although investments in children should never be limited to tax deduction strategies, the tax per ton/cubic meter is a win-win approach for engaging with the Government and EIs. As this “tax” would follow the same approach as currently applied to CSR and resettlement funds today, it would merely be pre-payment of eventual tax obligations and therefore not “cost” anything additional to the companies. At the same time, given the expected high level of extraction and the corresponding incomes from mineral/coal, gas and oil extraction, frontloading of taxes will be a major breakthrough in terms of reliable social sector financing for Mozambique. Back of the envelope calculations suggest this proposed tax on coal could equate to approximately US$ 200-300 million per year by 2016, at given market price of approximately $US 117 dollars per ton, and increase to triple that by 2025. To do this, we need to develop long-term social sector programme modeling and costings as well as capacity development and sector strengthening within existing SWAPs. Might we consider exploring these possibilities in Pratolino? Can we afford not to?
Dear colleagues
ReplyDeleteIn preparation for the upcoming Pratolino meeting, I have outlined a few areas we should pay particular attention to:
1. Response to the crisis and First Call for Children, in bad times as in good
2. Equity -what are the implications of an equity strategy for macro-policy, tax policy and impact on the upper levels of income distribution, as well as on those in poverty.
3. Human security and risk reduction
4. Strategies of political economy in support of all of the above - and the role which international agencies and a focus on children can provide.
5. UNICEF’s role in supporting theoretical work on human development and on how concepts of strengthening capabilities and expanding choices apply to children at the different stages of growing up.
To read further on this, please refer to my recent working paper on UNICEF, Economists and Economic Policy: Bringing children into development strategies
http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/index_60140.html
Sincerely, Richard Jolly
Dear all
ReplyDeleteFirst let me express my thanks to UNICEF for inviting me to join this group. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Andy Sumner, Gabriele Koehler, Bob Deacon and others’ inspiring proposals for UNICEF’s future work. Allow me to throw a few additional suggestions into the ring. To make the digestion process somewhat easier for UNICEF I have tried to highlight common threads and other similar proposals.
Equity: I second Andy Sumner and Mark Hereward’s proposal that UNICEF maintain their focus on equity, particularly the inequities facing children and poor households living in middle income countries. To effect change in these contexts I would suggest UNICEF assume three different roles:
– First, they should play Andy’s proposed ‘upstream’ role, advocating on issue beyond money such as governance and redistribution.
– Second, as per Sarah Hague’s suggestion, UNICEF should deepen its in-country research on the nature of inequity, seeking to understand the characteristics of exclusion and chronic poverty.
– Third, having identified the particular determinants of inequality and inequity within any given country UNICEF should be able to offer technical guidance on what addressing these inequities may look like in practice. When it’s a question of financial barriers preventing access to key services what are viable financing options? How should governments progressively realise universal coverage? What is the relevance of social health insurance / means tested support and so on?
Translating child rights policy into practice: UNICEF’s social and economic policy team have done some very innovative work on social budgeting / policy planning / how best to mainstream child rights, but it’s been quite technical work, seemingly utilised by sub-national actors and accountability agents as opposed to being adopted by governments. I would suggest that UNICEF try to politicise this work, advocating more strongly for its utilisation at the national level. One way to do so might be to create an advocacy moment at the international or national level around financial allocations for child rights or minimum criteria for good child rights governance? You might want to consider stronger partnerships to ensure realisation, for example the World Bank or key bilaterals?
Economic Crisis: To second Frances Stewart’s suggestion, continue and reinforce your work of 2010 and 2011 on the economic crisis. Perhaps also consider the implications of a Eurozone collapse, particularly how austerity packages might harm poor children and households? As Gabriele Koehler pointed out, UNICEF could have immense traction in debates on macroeconomic policy and social spending if it teamed up with the IMF or regional development banks. But UNICEF should not only play a research and advisory role. To translate this research into meaningful change UNICEF should play the role of an accountability watchdog. One way to do this might be to develop some kind of child rights governance index, which considers allocations and investments in key areas of child welfare. If reported on an annual basis UNICEF would be able to continually assess donors' and aid recipients' commitment to the progressive realisation of child rights, and more systematically monitor the impacts of the economic crisis on social spending.
The private sector: As highlighted at the recent high level forum on aid effectiveness the private sector is becoming increasingly prominent in development – as a source of finance, service provision and technical expertise. UNICEF should undertake systematic research into the appropriate roles and responsibilities of the private sector, as well as key regulatory gaps, so that the private sector can become a coherent and regulated development partner, which helps to realise children's rights. You may also want to deepen your work on the private sectors contribution to delivering equitable growth.
With best wishes,
Jessica Espey
Dear colleagues
ReplyDeleteUNICEF is already doing excellent work in many important areas. Important innovations are the rapid sentinel monitoring, the budget tracking, the disparities work and the work under the rubric of ‘recovery for all’. There is something to be said for not spreading the work too widely, but focussing on one or two areas where you can make a difference.
From this perspective, especially, any ideas I have may well be redundant, since you seem to be covering so much. But I would suggest the following as possible additional priority areas:
1. The situation of children in developed countries. It is evident that the economic crisis is having major adverse impact on children in some developed countries, via cuts in benefits and in education expenditure particularly. Child poverty is rising. Some countries protect children much more than others. I suggest monitoring this situation is one priority which could be encompassed in many of the other areas you are already covering.
2. Children in difficult circumstances. Some children face particularly difficult circumstances for a range of reasons:
a. During conflict and as refugees
b. During natural disasters.
c. As orphans (many of whom are AIDs orphans)
d. As children of highly disadvantaged families due to illhealth or disability.
e. Children in single parent families.
UNICEF could start by specifying the range of difficult circumstances confronting children in the world today, and then explore policies that might protect these children. This general category could encompass, the Recovery for All work.
3. Children in groups that are discriminated against or marginalised. For example, children of unscheduled castes or tribes in India; children of minorities in China; indigenous children in Peru; Roma children in Europe. This may be covered by the disparities work. But I get the impression that the disparities work is concerned with poverty and inequality in general and not horizontal inequality. Special policies are needed towards horizontal inequality over and above general anti-poverty policies – e.g. against discrimination; providing special support; language policy in schools; curricula generally.
This would essentially qualify and add to existing work on disparities.
Frances Stewart
Dear all, many good points are being made in this round of comments and I'd like to pick up on some of them.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I do want to reiterate how important UNICEF's policy work has been and continues to be. Having been on the inside of the UN working on policy research and advocacy, I've watched over the years and in different contexts how UNICEF invests in the serious substantive policy analysis on the critical issues of the day. This work is so important because it brings real evidence based policy analysis and fills a gap. I've seen this not only in high profile debates such as the debates over structural adjustment in the 80s and 90s but on less well known contexts at country levels. In that context, what's valuable is not so much the existence of a major global research program but the ability of the system to respond to emerging issues and contexts at local, regional and global levels. So for example, when the Asian Financial Crisis hit in 1999, it was UNICEF offices that provided evidence and insights into what was going on at the country level and also played a significant contribution at the global level. Today when one looks for literature on the consequences of financial crises on human well being, UNICEF's work is an important reference.
The point I wish to make here is that we want to keep alive the tradition of engagement with economic and social policy throughout the organization and pursuing diverse agendas that respond to contextually specific challenges as opposed to having too rigid a corporate policy where all such work is concentrated in well defined and narrowly focussed programs owned by a particular group or department. However, this does not mean that the role of the policy group in New York is not important. On the contrary, the work at the global level is obviously critical for all the multiple actors in different departments and country/regional offices by leading critical debates, methodologies, approaches, and maintaining visibility as a significant actor in international debates.
I think the formula for effective UN agency work in policy must be a a mix of: rigorous evidence gathering and analysis; ethical principles; and an action plan that is contextually relevant. Institutionally it means a mix of: research; policy engagement and participation in dialogue at national, regional and global levels involving top leadership. If you think about successful UN advocacy you will find these elements.
Regarding thematic issues, I want to emphasize the value of UNICEF's work on economic - rather than just 'social' - policy issues, including macroeconomic policy. Here again I think there is a major gap in the UN system that UNICEF continues to fill. While there is a lot of good work on macroeconomic policy in DESA, UNICEF is actually quite unique in continuing to focus on the consequences of macroeconomic policy choices on human well being, distribution and poverty. So I do applaud UNICEF's work on fiscal austerity. Does anyone know any other UN agency that is working on this issue from the human centered perspective? I haven't heard/read much, maybe UNRISD but I don't see much coming out of UNDP, ILO, DESA, UN Women, etc.
-- continued from above
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jessica about human rights. We all agree on the importance of equity. But the term equity is ambiguous, open to interpretation. Human rights as a framework strengthens advocacy and analysis in the following ways. First, it speaks to equality of rights, not equity in opportunities and outcomes, and includes issues of discrimination and justice. Second, human rights norms are ethical principles that come out of a global consensus building process. That is a much more solid basis for arguing for desirable ends rather than the more ambiguous issue of 'equity'. Third, human rights processes of the CRC have strong political support and buy in that is global. There is a constituency out there. Human rights processes would be an important political force for policy change if the link could be made between economic policy and human rights, and wrong policy as human rights violation.
UNICEF has an important record as a leading voice on human rights as well as a leading practitioner agency on rights based approaches. I have been hearing less of that language and engagement. This needs to be revived.
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteI would like to share some experiences from UNICEF's work in social policy in Namibia as an example for some of the key issues and principles of engagement in Middle Income Countries.
Here in Namibia, the classification as upper middle income country hides very real and persisting development challenges: income inequality is amongst the highest in the world, unemployment, poverty and deprivation are widespread, and a high degree of government commitment and resource allocation do not translate into good education and health outcomes.
Until recently, child vulnerability has been mainly understood as meaning orphans and children affected by HIV and AIDS and special provisions such as child welfare grants have been put in place to support these children. Other vulnerabilities, such as child poverty, that affect a much larger number of children on the other hand have received very little attention or systematic support. Achieving equity in Namibia is therefore not only a quesition of identifying the most vulnerable children, but to broaden the perspective to reach all vulnerable children with quality services and social protection measures while providing additional support to the most disadvantaged and marginalised children.
Against this background UNICEF Namibia's engagement in social policy has focused on
• advocacy for the recognition of child poverty as key issue that needs to be addressed and the development of an integrated, cross-sectoral child poverty reduction strategy, including a comprehensive and child-sensitive social protection system;
• technical assistance to strengthen child-centred data analysis (build capacities of the statistical office to conduct a child poverty assessment of NHIES data), to assess the effectiveness of the social protection system in reducing child poverty and to model and cost alternative policy options such as the expansion of child welfare grants from orphans to children in poverty;
• providing analysis and technical assistance for improving efficiency and effectiveness of budget allocations and more equitable distribution of resources, for example in the education sector;
• and facilitating an enabling legislative environment for the fulfillment of social protection outcomes. For example the approved Child Care and Protection Bill is legislating for social protection mechanisms such as child welfare grants.
Other emerging issues include young people and their transition from school to the labour market, the situation of vulnerable groups of children that are often being overlooked such as children with disabilities, as well as the implications of climate change.
UNICEF Namibia is bringing very little funding to the social policy table. Our credibility depends on a number of underlying principles:
• Raising issues based on evidence and taking a clear position from a child rights perspective.
• Government ownership of studies and projects. This ensures that results are being used and implemented and that there is no import of one-size-fits-all programmes but strategies that fit the country context and government priorities
• Keeping it simple and common sense, e.g. in regard to targeting mechanisms.
The challenge is to move from advocacy and having government partners buy into crucial issues to actual policy change and implementation. For UNICEF this requires the ability to make longer term commitments and therefore also secure levels of funding and human resource capacity. It also needs a mix of upstream work and the ability to show on the ground what does and does not work in achieving equity and reducing child poverty.
Dr Petra Hoelscher, Social Policy Specialist, UNICEF Namibia
Dear colleagues,
ReplyDeleteI have been inspired by the many thoughtful contributions made to date on the road to Pratolino, and mine will largely build upon what has gone before. I would like to kick off, though, with stating the frame of reference I use to shape my own thinking and which, therefore undergirds the proposals below. Firstly, for me the whole purpose of development is not growth, not the MDGs, but the realisation of human rights of every girl, boy, woman or man without exception or discrimination.
By virtue of its mission, adopted in 1996:
“UNICEF is guided by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and strives to establish children's rights as enduring ethical principles and international standards of behaviour towards children.”
Indeed, UNICEF’s role in the implementation of the Convention is highlighted in Article 45 and as such has been accepted by all the countries who have ratified the CRC. Hence UNICEF is a human rights organisation, by its own declaration and by virtue of the acceptance by all the Sates parties to the CRC, none of whom have entered a reservation to Art. 45. What this should mean is an unabashed embrace of human rights work, language and principles, and a recognition by UNICEF and of UNICEF as being a champion for the universal realization of children’s rights, without discrimination. Thus, while the current focus on inequity is positive, as the most disadvantaged and poorest children should always be UNICEF’s priority, it is not as powerful, or as transformative, as a focus on inequality. Why? Because inequity is largely understood as requiring as a technical solution: providing more quality services to poor and marginalized children and women. While more services to more people is without doubt a good thing, it does not address the reason why these children were excluded in the first places. Very often, it is not by chance that children are excluded from services, end up in the 5th quintile; it is due inequalities rooted in discrimination, which requires far more than technical solutions to address. So I would like to see UNICEF embrace its human rights identity, call for the end to inequality within and among states. Doing so would require, as several contributors have highlighted, a much more political and less technical approach to UNICEF’s work.
This perspective, then, inspired by much that has been contributed to date leads me to propose the following for discussion and elaboration at Pratolino [details/rationale are elaborated below for those who have the time to read further]:
A shift in rhetoric, programmes and [most difficult] resources from ‘poor countries’ to ‘poor children’, and to universal messages “all children the have the right to….”
An ever more extensive use of data to highlight both vertical and horizontal inequalities in indicators of child well-being.
Consideration for the development of an index capable of comparing child rights progressive realization across countries, much as Fukuda-Parr et al. developed for economic & social rights-http://www.serfindex.org/research/
Political and advocacy strategies to bring inequalities to public discussion and action
Universal social policies to reduce inequality and advance universal realization of rights. Methods and approaches, including for leveraging funds.
Capacity development of citizen groups to advance a rights-respecting culture, stabilise the commitment and demand for children’s rights across election cycles, hold government accountable and combat discrimination.
1. UNICEF must work to reduce, and eliminate, the deprivations of poverty faced by all children, be they living in rich, middle-income or poor countries. The way UNICEF works will be different, depending on the relative wealth of the country: evidence-based advocacy in all countries, supplemented by legislative, policy and institutional support in both MICs and in poor countries, further supplemented by innovative technical solutions to service bottlenecks in poor countries.
-- continued from above
ReplyDelete2. UNICEF must relentlessly expose inequalities in all dimensions; at present much attention is rightly given to economic inequalities between the wealthiest and the poorest quintiles in child well-being outcomes; this attention needs to be expanded to include, as Frances Stewart has mentioned, horizontal inequalities. To my mind this means examining, within a given quintile: gender inequalities, spatial inequalities [including due to unequal taxation or per capita budgetary allocations among provinces], ethnic and racial inequalities, and religious inequalities, among others. While MICs can contribute significantly to revealing these inequalities, UNICEF should not hesitate to use the evidence generated by partners as well as the government itself, to highlight where and which children are facing obstacles to realizing their rights.
3. In order to bring these inequalities to public discussion, as a prelude for legislative, policy and civic action, UNICEF needs to develop and/or use its capacity as a political actor, but one with a non-partisan agenda—i.e the agenda of the child. Sticking closely to UNICEF’s agenda of universal realization of child rights allows it to be political while being seen to be non-partisan. Political work is most successful with allies, be they in the government itself, in the UN system, with churches and other local actors for social justice, media and academia. UNICEF’s national and global voice needs to be raised to create a new ethic, whereby the fact that any child, anywhere, is growing up in poverty with his or her human potential cruelly compromised, is seen as being as morally unacceptable as slavery became in the 19th century. This requires UNICEF to amplify its voice and lead a global movement. Are we ready? Are we willing? Regardless, some kind of training in political analysis, action and advocacy would be highly beneficial to all UNICEF’s senior staff.
4. Beyond exposing inequalities, raising its voice and bringing the deprivations of child poverty to public discussion, UNICEF needs to offer its partners (1) an analysis of the causes of inequalities [including the delicate analysis of structural discrimination], so that the appropriate solution can be devised/adjusted (2) a proposed legislative, policy, or civic action remedy for reducing inequalities. I tend to agree with Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, that rather than establishing a set-menu of policy initiatives UNICEF would engage in [as was done when Focus Are 5 was first introduced], flexibility and diversity of initiatives be encouraged. If the original social policy priorities were maintained, some of the great opportunities we have read about on this road to Pratolino—extraction tax in Mozambique, Public Expenditure Tracking Survey in Burkina Faso, etc. may have been missed.
-- continued from above
ReplyDelete5. All economic and social policies UNICEF supports should reduce inequality and discrimination and be universal, that is, not targeted to a particular group but accessible to all. It is curious that UNICEF would never propose a targeted primary health care or primary education system, yet routinely endorsees targeted social protection programmes. Universal does not mean uniform; special measures may be needed to allow all children to access social protection services—just as are needed to attract and keep girls in school, to teach in minority languages, to allow cultural birthing practices, etc. As Gabrielle Koehler writes, “all children have a right to….” must be the principle UNICEF operates under, particularly if, as Andy Sumner writes, a ‘guaranteed right not to live in absolute poverty’ is becoming financially feasible. UNICEF should champion the universal social floor. To be flexible and opportunistic, UNICEF may need to develop a reliable set of partners able to offer a broad range of expertise—here stronger partnerships with the World Bank the IMF and with renowned academic institutions is advisable. Already this is occurring in some countries, as well as at HQ, but a critical mass is needed, which would also help amplify UNICEF’s global voice for all rights to all children.
6. UNICEF should strengthen the capacity of civil society to effectively play its role with government in advancing the rights of all children. This means supporting local NGOs, CSO, church groups, youth groups, women’s organisations and children’s organisations with:
information on children’s rights, inequalities and effective programmes,
management and mobilization skills
networking skills
monitoring/social audit techniques
advocacy strategies and skills
With added capacity, these groups can claim their own rights, but also champion children’s rights, and hold the government accountable for progressive realization by monitoring indicators of child well-being. By democratizing commitment to the realisation of children’s rights in society, UNICEF can help overcome the mentioned problem of short-term election cycles that lead to short-term solutions for children. An informed, mobilized and empowered citizenry is a stabilizer across election mandates, and can ensure the sustainability of actions to realise the rights of all children everywhere in the country.
7. Discrimination at the root of many inequalities needs to be sensitively addressed through law, policy and institutional reforms, but also by changing cultural attitudes and practices. This is a delicate and long-term endeavor which likewise requires the engagement of media but most particularly of all civil society actors, whose capacity for combating discrimination and prejudice must be developed and harnessed.
In conclusion, since the introduction of Focus Area 5 in 2006, UNICEF has made great strides in engaging in social policy analysis and design. As a result, there are many successful examples of transformative social change for children’s and women’s rights, change that occurs at a relatively low cost. With greater political engagement and greater voice at national and global levels, the transformative nature of UNICEF’s policy work can become better recognized, and appreciated. Doing so will help address the great challenge, in these times of continuing financial crisis, of persuading UNICEF’s donors and Board to fully commit to poor children, where-ever they may live, and to urge UNICEF further upstream in poverty reduction.
Liz Gibbons
Mobilizing local capacity in policy analysis
ReplyDeleteUNICEF should continue to mobilize existing local capacity for policy analysis among researchers in developing countries to guide discussions, such as this one, on how to best advocate for children. Through their in-depth knowledge of local context and their ongoing presence throughout and – importantly – following policy analyses, they are able to elaborate and lobby for new and more relevant policies to promote child well-being.
Since 2008, the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP; www.pep-net.org) has been working with UNICEF to ensure a stronger and more effective voice for local researchers in developing countries. These collaborations embrace a wide range of policy studies.
A randomized control trial of a UNICEF community-led total sanitation program is an example of the scope for increased South-South collaboration. Led by an Argentinian research center (CEDLAS), the analysis draws on and transfers to local Malian researchers (GREAT) the considerable expertise in Latin America in recent impact evaluation techniques. Ongoing presence of local researchers revealed, for example, a substantial and unexpected deterioration in water quality between the source and its end use. See www.pep-net.org/programs/pieri/special-initiatives/impact-evaluation-of-an-innovative-program-to-improve-sanitation-practices-in-rural-mali/
When UNICEF sought to foresee and counter the effects of the global financial crisis on children in West and Central Africa, PEP’s African office (CRES, Senegal) assembled teams of local researchers in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ghana that were selected – in competition with leading Northern institutions - to conduct the study. The three teams conducted simulations of the crisis impacts and various policy responses using a combination of macro and micro (household survey-based) techniques that were subsequently taken up by their respective governments. For example, in Burkina Faso, the UNICEF office used the study’s discussions to stimulate reflection on the country’s new action plan for tackling the crisis. Initially the plan focused solely on financial and economic policy changes, but following the completion of the study in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance, the final document included a third section that introduced a wide range of social protection actions to combat directly the impacts on poverty. A follow-up study is now simulating the economic and child well-being impacts of various social policy reforms and financing mechanisms there.
Another area in which local researchers bring a unique advantage is in monitoring local child well-being conditions and the implementation of government policies called on by a number of contributors to this blog. In the Philippines and Burkina Faso, UNICEF and PEP are working together to use community-based monitoring systems to track the impacts of the crisis and, in particular, to better understand household coping mechanisms. See
http://www.pep-net.org/programs/mpia/special-initiatives/special-initiative-children/
Finally, UNICEF and PEP have been collaborating to provide support for local researchers in conducting child situational analyses in Burkina Faso and Uganda. Local researcher participation has been key in identifying relevant indicators in close engagement with policy makers and other stakeholders.
For more PEP studies on child well-being, see www.pep-net.org/themes/children/
John Cockburn, Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP)
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Laura Farfán, and I'm the Executive Director of the Latin American Center for HH.RR (CLADH), an Argentina-based NGO. (www.cladh.org). I would like to share with you the “CLADH Policy Statement on Children Poverty and Rights” as our contribution to this online discussion forum. This paper was also prepared together with Reynaldo Rivera, as a CLADH external advisor (www.intermediaconsulting.org)
One of the key themes for UNICEF´s work in Social and Economic Policy consist on “Refocusing on equity for children in middle-income countries”. This key theme involves, inter alia, poverty and malnutrition.
Malnutrition is one of the most harmful problems in middle-income countries that end to affect current child´s rights, future generations and national development. In order to address this issue, it is essential to strength the family, as a basic unit of society, to guarantee that it will receive comprehensive protection and support (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 16.3) and to promote UNCRC application. Maternity and motherhood, especially among young mothers, should be protected, as well. The role of women in the upbringing of children cannot be replaced. Hence, the effective access of the mother and the child to nutrition, health services, and education it’s a possible route to take in order to face this challenge.
How to bring children’s priority needs front and centre into national development policies?
By the implementation of new national laws and the formulation of national and international strategies, policies, programmes and development priorities, that seek to fulfill all human rights, especially those included in the UNCRC.
By implementing -in every national policy and programme- analysis that seeks to protect motherhood and address its needs.
By analyzing policies and programmes -at all relevant sectors of the economy-, with respect to their impact on poverty, especially on family well-being.
By developing and implementing anti-poverty programmes that improve access to food for women and child (under a certain age) living in poverty.
By developing a comprehensive national strategy for improving health, education and social services, so that families and children living in poverty have full access to such services.
By researching the impact of poverty on pregnant woman and the unborn, especially on their health and nutrition.
How to engage in national fiscal and budget policymaking process to increase investments in children?
By researching the long-term adverse effect on human and social development that child´s malnutrition has.
By making a “cost-benefits analysis” of national economic programmes aimed at ensuring women appropriate health services in connection with pregnancy, and adequate nutrition during pregnancy, lactation, and the upbringing of the child.
By making a “cost-benefits analysis” of national programmes, aimed at ensuring education and training of women, as an essential key to improving health, nutrition and education in the family.
By ensuring the participation of “mothers” in economic decision-making.
By promoting the activities of civil society and non-governmental organizations that works against poverty, and promoting its participation on the decision-making.
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ReplyDeleteHow to ensure social protection initiatives are lasting and geared towards building systems?
By enacting legislation that creates new educational and health systems, all of which acknowledges the issue of malnutrition.
By taking positive measures to promote education and training for families on the importance of nutrition at the first stages of age.
By implementing monitoring system (in hospitals and other institution), that follows the improvements in the application of different national programmes for child nutrition, and documents its results.
By creating new agencies -within the Government scope- in charge of monitoring the application of child´s policies.
By enacting government strategies that includes long-term, medium-term, and short-term stages.
How to promote economic and financial policies that are socially inclusive and promote equitable outcomes?
By researching and supporting the best practices on nutrition, and promoting its implementation in other fields.
By encouraging NGOs´ initiatives, and supporting and implementing measures and programmes aimed at increasing the knowledge and understanding of the causes and consequences of malnutrition.
By ensuring the participation of woman, educators, and medical and social workers in the promotion of family policies.
By training politicians and other persons in positions of authority, in the importance of family protection.
By elaborating national strategies that take into account the needs of families in rural areas, as regards housing and health care, drinking water and education.
How to engage in strategic advocacy and partnerships that can promote sustainable, equitable and inclusive child and human development?
By building a network between NGOs, private sector, civil society, governments and international community.
By promoting that every sector has child malnutrition as a main issue of concern in its own field. NOGs could work on social programs, Universities could do researches, companies and industries could help promote nutrition through donations, governments should implement nutrition programs in all possible field (economic, social, educational, and the health field), and the international community should seek for reduce poverty and child malnutrition in every international forum.
By promoting the following principles, suggested by Eurochild in their Policy Position on Family Policies: a) frame family policies within a children’s rights approach as defined by the UNCRC, b) create the right conditions for positive parenting to take place, c) invest in early intervention and prevention services for families, d) support parents’ empowerment and participation, e) recognize and respect diversity, f) ensure adequate and universal family benefits, g) respect children’s right to be heard and ensure that the views and experiences of children are taken into account in the development of services and policies that affect them.
Dear colleagues, please find below the contribution of the Human Rights Cluster, of UNICEF’s Gender & Rights Unit, to the upcoming Pratolino meeting.
ReplyDeleteA new FA5 should be founded on the UN Charter and UNICEF Mission Statement: Non Negotiable
The protection and promotion of human rights – together with security and development – is one of the three pillars of the United Nations’ work (UN, 2005). UNICEF is guided by the UN Charter and therefore, has a responsibility to facilitate and promote the realization of human rights, globally and through its field operations. Using the CRC, CEDAW and more recently the CRPD as corner stones, UNICEF consistently demonstrates commitment to promoting and protecting the human rights of children and women, and strives to establish their provisions as enduring ethical principles and international standards of behaviour towards children and women.
A new FA5 should be robust
This means being informed by current trends in human rights. While there are many, we propose three developments:
2005 World Summit
This summit builds on the 1993 world conference on human rights, reaffirming that common fundamental values, including freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for all human rights, are essential to international relations. It further positions a) peace and security, b) development and c) human rights as the pillars of the United Nations system and the foundations for collective security and well-being, underscoring that human rights are preconditions for sustainable growth, good governance and sound economic management.
OHCHR High Commissioners Statement, 2012
The first point of reference is the October 2011 OHCHR statement to the CEB on: The Tunis Imperative: Human Rights in Development Cooperation in the Wake of the Arab Spring. In the light of developments in the Middle East, the statement cautions against an over-emphasis on economic growth without corresponding initiatives which support equitable distribution of the benefits of economic development in a manner that ensures that people live without fear or want. It therefore calls on UN agencies to initiate people-centred and norm-based engagement with Member States, using the UN Charter (“we the people”) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as reference points. A recommendation was made for country relevant interventions, particularly those which impact on the excluded and marginalized; effective collaboration with human rights-related institutions and support to the design of socio-economic policies which address the human rights of the individual (e.g. discrimination, participation, employment, education and health). This statement led to commitments by UN heads of agencies to apply human rights as a catalytic change agent in the development process.
SGs Five Year Plan
The SGs Five Year Action Agenda (2012) contains five pillars of engagement: a) sustainable development; b) Prevention; c) building a safer and more secure world; d) supporting nations in transition and; e) working with and for women and young people. The plan positions human rights as a critical component of Prevention calling on UN agencies and partners to work towards:
1. Developing a policy framework that identifies basic elements needed to prevent human rights violations;
2. Establishing a preventive matrix that will chart progress and gaps in the use of a range of human rights instruments
3. Advancing the responsibility to protect agenda
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ReplyDeleteSpecific proposals for a revised FA5
UNICEF needs to position itself strategically and adequately in order to respond to the prominent place of human rights on the world stage in the coming months and years. Being a major player in the UNDG-HRM and other processes and partnerships will require a high degree of coherence with the rest of the UN system, while at the same time demonstrating and sharing its own unique results in the field. To this end, the following proposals are being made with respect to positioning of human rights in the new or next FA5 with reference to ensuring full integration of human rights in social and economic policy, social budgeting, poverty analysis, social protection and data collection:
I. Reinforce the integration of human rights principles:
Programming must be underpinned by five main human rights principles: normativity, non-discrimination, participation, accountability and transparency (From the 2012 HRBAP Evaluation). The principle of normativity will require a new FA5 to work towards constructive engagement with treaty bodies, particularly the CRC, CEDAW and CRPD Committees to ensure that the work of FA5 is informed by that of the Committee and vice-versa. The principle of participation underscores social policy is a government responsibility and the necessity of reflecting the general and specific experiences of the people. Special measures must be put in place to ensure that the poor, including those located in hard to reach excluded and marginalized areas are given opportunities to contextualize policy. UNICEF could support governments and CSOs on the development of participation protocols as well as enter into partnerships with the private sector for the production of cheaper but effective communication devices such as mobile phones and community radios for information dissemination and grassroots participation. More critically, UNICEF also needs to support empowerment processes that provide platforms for citizens to make demands on local and central government. This is related to the principle of accountability which plays a key role in empowering poor people to challenge the status quo. It has two elements: answerability and redress. The first requires duty bearers to be transparent about processes and actions and to justify their choices. Redress requires institutions to address grievances when individuals or organizations fail to meet their obligations. UNICEF could promote the simplification and translation of social and economic policies into different languages for their efficacy. These proposals are linked to the principle of transparency, which calls for opportunities for the citizenry to access information and to be aware of policies which impact on their everyday lives.
II. Who benefits from economic growth?
FA5 needs to support government efforts at economic growth and indeed should research, monitor and advocate around newer areas which drive or hinder economic growth in especially developing countries e.g. WTO discussions/debates including those which impact on unfavourable terms of trade. However, given that a number of developing countries have recorded economic growth in the past 5 years and yet have not demonstrated improved human development indicators, human rights records and gender equality in many fields, it will becomes necessary for a new FA5 to adopt more rigorous approach in building evidence to show that some countries are not e.g. fulfilling economic, social and cultural rights to the maximum extent of available resources (article 4 of the CRC).
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ReplyDeleteIII. Lifting the veil: Who are behind the numbers?
Emphasizing a point already well known, national averages do not provide adequate information on a country’s performance on rights implementation as seen in recent equity analysis. This is already evident in MDG country reports in which we find that a number of countries report being on track or have achieved certain goals without making any progress on those goals with regard to minorities or persons with disabilities. The independent expert on minority issues has noted with concern the limited visibility of ethnic or linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples in MDG reporting and PRSPs. This requires deeper analysis and where necessary more specific analysis in relation to specific groups of children and women.
IV. Changing perspectives on poverty
Community based experiences are demonstrating that assessing poverty from only an economic perspective undermines its multidimensional nature. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has defined poverty as: “a human condition characterized by sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.” Other perspectives must be taken into account in an understanding: these include the ever increasing experience of land loss among groups of people (e.g. indigenous peoples) and individuals (women and youth).
V. From legislative reforms to children and governance:
While the substantive contribution of human rights to current FA5 has been in the field of legislative reform initiatives, a new FA5 should build on the current high wave of legislative initiatives across countries, by focusing on measures which support implementation. Working in partnership with other agencies such as Save the Children Fund and the African Child Policy Forum, who are also engaged in similar work, the emphasis should be on supporting mechanisms for voice and accountability of public service providers and building capacities of relevant public sector agencies to respond to the post-MDG agenda, which require a strong public sector machinery. In response to the statement of the HC of OHCHR, efforts should also be made to forge closer partnerships and support capacities of National Human Rights Institutions for their effective monitoring of and response to human rights violations and the design of early warning systems.
Sincerely, Beatrice Duncan, Nicolette Moodie and Nicola Brandt. Gender Rights and Civic Engagement, UNICEF
Dear colleagues,
ReplyDeleteUNICEF’s Pratolino conference is drawing near. Prodded by Lis Gibbon's intervention and her case for having a joint child rights strategy for all countries, I’d like to input 3 points from a recent policy consultation with Germany's First Lady, organised by the NatCom Germany. The high-profile consultation, with roughly 100 parliamentarians, academics and NGOs, was convened to raise policymakers’ and public awareness of the inequitable conditions facing children in Germany, and the urgent need for alternative polices and children’s societal participation.
Three points from the consultation strike me as relevant for the Pratolino process:
• Regarding conceptual issues that have an impact on policy design: it was noted that the OECD and the European Union recently adopted UNICEF’s definitions of child wellbeing, acknowledging the centrality of participation and subjective wellbeing, in addition to objective factors such as health outcomes or education performance. In due course, this is expected to lead to a broadening of the policies recognised as necessary to realise child rights at the level of the entire EU and OECD constituency.
• Regarding the policy domains considered relevant for child wellbeing, the Bertram Report 2011/2012, commissioned by the NatCom, found that parents’ employment – or unemployment - had a statistically significant bearing on children’s wellbeing in general and school performance more specifically. This strongly implies that decent work and employment for adults needs to be part of UNICEF’s advocacy sphere.
• Regarding policy instruments, the same report made a strong case for a new type of universal child benefit –called the socio-economic income minimum, calculated on the basis of state- or city-level cost-of-living surveys. This of course relates directly to this year’s effort at the ILO to adopt a global recommendation on social protection floors. It offers a child-centred, equity policy oriented policy instrument – and might be a politically pragmatic approach for high and middle income countries.
These points will hopefully influence policy discourse and subsequent policy decisions in Germany, and perhaps might also inform UNICEF policy orientation discussions.
Reference "Bertram Report": Hans Bertram, Steffen Kohl and Wiebke Rösler, Zur Lage der Kinder in Deutschland 2011/2012. Unicef NatCom. Cologne 2011. www.unicef.de.
Sincerely, Gabriele Koehler
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteVery good discussion indeed and I would like to thanks colleagues who already endeavoured to contribute. I took my time to read all the contributions posted so far, and I am amazed by the quality and the usefulness of the discussion.
I would like to come back to a subject that has been pointed out by many colleagues, the one regarding Governance. Paul Quarles van Ufford and Samman J. Thapa from Vietnam made a very good contribution regarding this issue. Rada Noeva and Mizuho Okimoto-Kaewtahip, to name a few, came back to that issue also. I would like to support their point, and put it in perspective with the specific case of sub-Saharan African.
In the West and Central Africa Region (WCAR), UNICEF has been supporting the design of pro-poor; pro-child and equity focused Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) and sectoral strategies. In this regard, I can see that we are making headway since more and more PRSPs integrate issues such as child poverty, child protection, nutrition, social protection, etc.
Once we get these pro-poor and pro-child PRSPs, our focus is to make sure that the national budget is in line with the strategy. To that end, we are focusing on budget analysis, such as social budgeting, child budgeting, public expenditure review, sectoral analysis of the budget, etc., in order to monitor resource allocation and make sure that social sectors are getting a bigger share of the resources. I can say that this is also quiet successful, since more and more resources are devoted to basic social services such as education, health, social protection and so on.
But when it comes to the outcomes, the results are disappointing. Despite better policies and increasing resources, access to basic social services is very low in Africa. That is where Governance comes into play: Designing better policies and increasing resources to basic social services is not enough to reach the most vulnerable, and as someone mentioned, we need to look at the supply side of Governance as well as the demand side.
Regarding the supply side, we need to support national and local governments to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. We therefore need to engage in public sector reforms, decentralisation, capacity building, etc. In Africa, national and local governments are particularly weak, not to mentioned fragile states, but no long term development strategy can succeed without a strong state. We may choose to work more at the local level, but we definitively cannot avoid that issue if we really want to have impacts.
In the demand side, many tools can be used, such as Public Expenditure Tracking, Social Audit, Benefit Incidence Analysis and so on, to inform, train and sensitize stakeholders.
We no longer cannot close our eyes and act as if everything is perfect in the Governance side. We need to tackles the issues at their roots, and Governance is a big issue.
Thanks to all of you
Gustave Nébié
Chief, Social Policy, UNICEF Mali
Dear colleagues,
ReplyDeleteIt has been inspiring to read the posts of this very rich and solid debate on several key issues to be taken into account to further develop UNICEF’s public policy agenda. Just wanted to add another angle that may be of interest to consider during the Pratolino sessions:
1. Influencing development agendas to advance children’s rights with children: It would be interesting to incorporate in this global consultation the voice and opinion of children and youth over the several topics that will be discussed. As well, this consultation could benefit from other topics raised by children on issues that make their well-being and should be of concern for public policies. (By the way, are children participating in the discussions this week in Pratolino?)
2. The moral status of children: related to the former and to solidly back up our policy advocacy effectiveness over results on children rights, it could also be of interest to discuss over the importance of having a strong conceptual foundation regarding the place of children on society’s demand for justice - and its understanding of just outcomes. The former will also provide us with a clearer and firmer standpoint for what UNICEF is interpreting as its equity approach. How to accommodate children within theories of justice – and of justice concerns - is a somehow neglected subject. There is no much on the rights and opportunities to advantage of children to be found in contemporary theories of social and distributional justice. In many egalitarian perspectives/theories, justice seems to reserve rights to “agents”, assuming that children would be capable to exercise only some forms of agency exercise and thus only exercise a limited bunch of rights (and not exercising others such as right to vote, to participate on certain public spheres and fora, to citizenship duties; etc.). The agency assumption that could be involved in such egalitarian theories does not apply for the case of children. Agency assumes autonomy to interact in society, freedom to do or to be. We know in UNICEF that children does not exercise agency in such traditional terms but justice and our demand for equality should also secure access to those intrinsic goods and features that complete children as children and thus treat childhood as of intrinsic value. Therefore, it would be fruitful to work with governments, local stakeholders and children in the development of new and innovative frameworks that will enable to identify and provide binding mechanisms to include in the policy agenda the treatment of such other ‘less obvious’ intrinsic goods that complete children as children. For example, frameworks that consult children on dimensions of their rights that could update and improve national legislation based in CRC; use policy to adjust social arrangements as to establish labour/urban planning/transport/childcare/others policies where parents could spend more time with their families; media & communication policies as to regulate the inclusion of news and information of interest for children and/or expressed in codes and language that children are able to understand and engage with; etc.
Claudio Santibanez Chief Policy, UNICEF Bolivia
Part I
ReplyDeleteDear colleagues:
This consultation provides a unique opportunity to stress the importance of community engagement and participation in policy making, and recommend concrete actions to advance children’s rights and promote equitable outcomes for children. The contributions to the online forum have covered a broad range of issues that illustrate both the depth and complexity of this task, but also put forward a series of concrete ideas to move forward.
I would like to contribute by emphasizing the need to further discuss engagement of children and youth and ensure that their voices are heard in the policy making processes. This has been addressed by some contributions to this forum, and I would argue that it must be seen as a critical and central dimension of this discussion. One of the key themes for the consultation is “The World We Want: Promoting Equitable and Sustainable Development for Children”. This theme may well be broadened to read, “The World They Want: Children’s Voices for Equitable and Sustainable Development”, which would contribute to placing children at the center of the policy making process and as active participants as well.
Sue Nichols (a researcher with the Hawke Institute for Sustainable Societies/University of South Australia), states that the increasing attention to children’s rights, particularly their right to be consulted in matters that directly affect them, has led to the creation of mechanisms and institutions that work toward that aim (e.g., the Children and Young Peoples’ Unit in the United Kingdom), and that scholars and organizations that lead the development of social participation programs for children emphasize “that strategies should enable children to express their particular standpoints, recognise the diversity of children’s situations and interests, (and) connect children with powerful policy networks” (p.119). Policy strategies that take this approach tend to view children as citizens who can play an active role, as opposed to seeing them as “citizens in waiting” (p.120).
Nichols adds that “interventions targeted at children have often been motivated by a futures perspective – particularly the prevention of negative features of adult futures such as ill health, criminality, drug dependence or too-early pregnancy…these interventions have frequently failed to accord children status as social agents. Children’s own views, either about their futures or about the interventions aimed at delivering particular futures, have rarely been sought” (p.120) - Nichols, S. 2007. Children as citizens: literacies for social participation, Early Years, v.27, n.2, pp. 119–130.
Arguably, these remarks provide a useful perspective to further explore engagement of children and youth in policy making. We are at an interesting turning point. The recognition of children and young people as key and active players in the advancement of a rights-based agenda is increasingly present and discussed in the literature. The notion of children as agents of change also has been highlighted by contributions to this forum (e.g., Jingqin Chai and Martin Evans on efforts toward a green economy).
An important question we need to ask is to what extent governments and other key players in the policy making arena are engaging with and allowing the voices of children and young people to be heard. What mechanisms can we promote and use to make this happen in a sustainable and meaningful manner? UNICEF has undertaken important efforts in this area. One such example has been shared by our colleagues from Vietnam who are using a “social audit approach” and tools such as citizen score cards and community score cards, to advance policy work.
Part II
ReplyDeleteHow do we ensure, then, that engagement of children and youth happens in a participatory and equitable manner? Communication for development (C4D) strategies, given their particular focus on participation and local ownership, can play a critical role to ensure the centrality, voice and engagement of citizens, including children and youth. Some contributions to this forum by UNICEF colleagues have highlighted communication’s role (e.g., Ethiopia). Numerous examples of creative/innovative ways to engage citizens in policy making have been developed and applied in several countries, which can also be used to facilitate active participation of children and youth. The rapid advances in information and communication technologies and their increasing availability provide unmatched opportunities to sustain these efforts. For instance, UNICEF uses social media and other ICTs (e.g. digital mapping) in participatory ways to engage children and young people on various development issues (e.g. Uganda; Brazil). One word of caution, however, is to ensure that participation in these processes also reflects diversity across age groups, gender, minorities and other factors.
UNICEF’s leadership in engaging children and youth in policy making is critical. The CRC provides a solid platform to ensure that children and youth have a seat at the policy making table, and that, as key stakeholders, their voices are heard. The increase and improvement of the quality of communication between the State, civil society organizations, and communities is not only a strategy for greater participation, but it can also be a strategy for better governance and development with an equity perspective. If participation and engagement become part of children’s everyday life, and if they are given opportunities to participate and be heard in policy making processes on issues that directly affect them, these will be great steps toward a generation of fully engaged citizens.
I wish participants in the Pratolino Consultation a successful meeting and look forward to the report and recommendations.
Rafael Obregon