This body of work is investigating governance issues involved in the realization of children's rights. The first two strands of research have focused on themes that have cross-over significance for systems governance in child protection, but also much wider implications for accountability and the realization of rights in general:
a) research into the role of independent human rights institutions (IHRI) for children as national accountability mechanisms supporting the protection of child rights, identifying their main features and characteristics, and the elements and conditions that contribute to their effectiveness, including mandate, appointment processes, operational procedures and oversight mechanisms;
b) field-based research into effective formal and non-formal coordination in the public sector, with a focus on birth registration in Ghana, Peru and a third country yet to be selected, asking which factors determine the effectiveness of coordination within the public sector for CRC implementation and what are the entry points for change to strengthen implementation structures and processes?
The OoR is in the process of developing other strands to this area of research, including:
- revisiting General Measures of Implementation, 25 years after the CRC: what new guidance might evolutions in the study of governance offer?
- lessons from social accountability: what is the evidence that citizen mobilization improves outcomes for children?
- is there evidence that child rights based approaches are more effective than non-rights based approaches - and what are the implications for the definition and measurement of results?
