After formulating your objectives and results, you need to assess risks and assumptions that may help or hinder the progress of the programme.

When mainstreaming child rights in the programme design, the risks often relate to the following issues:

• resistance to change and the slow nature of change at the societal level in terms of shared attitudes, beliefs, traditions;
  


• the likelihood of achieving individual or institutional capacity development for child rights promotion by duty bearers or rights holders due to a variety of contextually-specific factors (political, economic, social, cultural);
  


• conflicts and power struggles over divergent interests between children and more powerful adult stakeholders; and
  


• lack of understanding or commitment by duty bearers to the needs and interests of children as being separate and distinct from those of adults.

As you go up the results chain, the programme is less and less in control of these risks and their mitigation. Therefore, risks can only be appropriately identified at the output and outcome levels, as the overall objective (impact) is beyond the control of the programme.