This research paper, produced by the Children’s Rights and Protection Unit in Policy Branch at CIDA in the spring of 2005, was developed out of an internal review of our learning from CIDA’s Action Plan on Child Protection 2000-2005. It seemed obvious to us that the issue of children’s rights and child protection should be at the centre of international development policy – yet in reality this is not so in spite of the increasing evidence of abuses of children’s rights and of children themselves.
We were interested to find out what other donors or organizations were doing with regards to children’s rights and protection, but as we tried to get a global sense of their position we found that the information was not easy to find. Although it was possible to visit websites, most of them were out-of-date or did not divulge the information we were looking for – hence the idea for this survey.
Child protection programming has risen in prominence over the past decade as UN Agencies, governments, international donors, financial institutions and non-governmental organizations have become increasingly aware of the need to reach marginalized populations of children and youth who are not benefiting from mainstream development efforts. This is linked to the increased adoption by UN Agencies, donor organizations and NGOs of a human rights approach to development with a specific focus on children’s rights as set out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The following survey synthesizes information on the policies and programming of a number of these organizations with the intention of advocating for more child- centered policies, as well as promoting increased levels of awareness and collaboration in the best interests of children.
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