Students walking past their school in Brazil where 62 per cent of reported child victims of violence are girls and 60 per cent of reported cases occur at home. (14 March 2019) Ending violence against children by 2030 is among the most important goals for children in the SDGs. The lack of robust, disaggregated data and evidence to understand the magnitude and nature of violence against children in their respective countries remains a challenge.
An international meeting to create a Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Data and Evidence to End Violence Against Children is held 18 – 19 March 2019 at UNICEF Innocenti, in Florence. The meeting is organized by the office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, and UNICEF on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children.
While advocacy and political will to support ending violence is on the upswing, challenges in the field of violence prevention remain around improving global, regional and national availability of quality data, evidence and learning. Resolving these issues and building consensus on greater global cooperation moving forward is necessary to ensure accelerated progress towards the scaling up of promising programmes and strategies, and also to ensure timely and effective monitoring of progress towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.
These factors further underscore the importance of “quality, accessible, timely and reliable disaggregated data to enable the measurement of progress and to ensure no one is left behind”.
The international consultation brings together experts and stakeholders working on data and evidence on the protection of children from violence to discuss and build consensus on how to address the challenges in producing sound data and evidence. The agenda includes discussions on how to build agreements on definitions, indicators and methodologies to ensure collective global effort to improve evidence standards and practices.
The two-day meeting will focus on conversation and consensus building about:
- what data and evidence resources are needed to support countries taking action to end violence against children;
- what tools are currently used across agencies and places to collect data;
- what are the gaps in data, evidence and learning, and how can be addressed;
- how can current resources and platforms can be enhanced to create a dynamic and useful resource and avoid duplication;
- what actions should be taken to keep this agenda moving forward.
The organizers expect an engaging and fast-moving meeting, setting an agenda for the Forum’s work, and resulting in a strong coordinated action plan to guide data and evidence efforts to meet the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals, for a world where children can live free from violence, abuse and exploitation.
