Supporting child rights: synthesis of lessons learned in four countries

Guatemala, Kenya, Mozambique and Sudan have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and are bound to take legislative, policy, and administrative action to honour their legal obligations. This report synthesises the findings and lessons learned from an evaluation of Norway’s and Sweden’s aid interventions intended to promote child rights in these four countries.

The report finds that:

• interventions supporting child rights should reflect the four main principles of the CRC
• a functioning and sustainable system for ensuring child rights can only be state-based, as CSOs will never be able to sustain a nationwide child protection system
• state-to-state cooperation tends to move slowly and suffer the adverse affects of a volatile political environment.
  

The authors of this paper believe that Norway should adopt a mainstreaming approach similar to that of Sweden. Further recommendations include: 

• better policy compliance procedures should be put in place between the concerned Norwegian and Swedish agencies
• the aid authorities in Norway and Sweden should consolidate the information pertaining to interventions into one comprehensive database, and to devise an information system whereby documentation can be easily retrieved
• supporting targeted interventions by CSOs
• when making funding decisions, Norwegian and Swedish agencies should take into consideration that ‘sustainability’ may not be applicable to interventions that are advocatory in nature
  
• in view of the clear CRC emphasis on family-based care, it is recommend that institutionalised care be a measure of last resort when no other option is feasible
• serious thoughts should be given to how children can become more involved in all project activities.