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The Paris Declaration Principles and Child Rights Mainstreaming
The Paris Declaration principles encourage development partners to address development cooperation differently through new roles, responsibilities and relationships, as well as new modalities for channelling development assistance. These new responsibilities and commitments have implications for how child rights are mainstreamed in EC development cooperation. In the traditional project modality, the EC has more control over how its policy priorities - like child rights - are reflected in its investment choices. In the new aid modalities, the host government drives development decision-making. While it is sometimes more challenging to ensure that child rights get appropriate consideration in government-driven policies and plans, there are also important opportunities for sustainability and long-term changes in attitudes, capacities and practices. See below the implications of the five Paris Declaration Principles for child rights mainstreaming.
Move your mouse over each principle to view the CRM implications.
The state is the primary duty bearer, with an obligation to fulfil the rights of all its citizens, including girl and boy children. However, from a child rights perspective, the principle of ownership needs to extend beyond government and encompass ownership of child rights realisation by the nation as a whole. Secondary duty-bearers must also be engaged through policy dialogue, capacity building and public engagement. These secondary duty bearers include all adults responsible for the survival, development and protection of children (civil society, private sector, community leaders, parents, care-givers, etc).
In aligning development assistance with national policies and systems, donors must be mindful of the extent to which these adequately address child rights. Policy dialogue and capacity development are needed to make children visible at this level. It may be necessary to strengthen national information systems to ensure that data is disaggregated by sex and age for informed decision-making. Donors may also have to support special studies and research so that policy outcomes for particular groups of marginalised children can be identified, understood and constantly improved.
Harmonisation of donor practices offers an opportunity to improve coordination, communication and coherence around the promotion of child rights, including agreement on common concepts and approaches; shared analysis and assessment; and pooled funding for capacity strengthening.
Mainstreaming child rights considerations into national performance measurement and accountability frameworks is key to making children visible in the policy process. In efforts to measure results, national information systems may need to be strengthened in terms of sex and age disaggregated data. Child rights expertise should also be included on joint assessment teams for monitoring and evaluation.
International human rights standards offer a common reference as a basis for mutual accountability. The CRC principles and standards represent a basis for development partners to hold themselves accountable not only to one another, but to the mutually agreed responsibilities articulated in the CRC. The national budget is the main accountability tool in the new aid modalities, and it should adequately reflect policy goals, strategies and plans that mainstream child rights.
The 5 principles of the Paris Declaration and their implications for CRM are adapted from the EC/UNICEF Child Rights Toolkit (May 2011- not yet published)