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periodic reports call for detailed disaggregated statistical and other information covering all areas
of the Convention. It is essential not merely to establish effective systems for data collection,
but to ensure that the data collected are evaluated and used to assess progress in implementation,
to identify problems and to inform all policy development for children. Evaluation requires the
development of indicators related to all rights guaranteed by the Convention.
49.
The Committee commends States parties which have introduced annual publication of
comprehensive reports on the state of children’s rights throughout their jurisdiction. Publication
and wide dissemination of and debate on such reports, including in parliament, can provide a
focus for broad public engagement in implementation. Translations, including child-friendly
versions, are essential for engaging children and minority groups in the process.
50.
The Committee emphasizes that, in many cases, only children themselves are in a
position to indicate whether their rights are being fully recognized and realized. Interviewing
children and using children as researchers (with appropriate safeguards) is likely to be an
important way of finding out, for example, to what extent their civil rights, including the crucial
right set out in article 12, to have their views heard and given due consideration, are respected
within the family, in schools and so on.
G. Making children visible in budgets
51.
In its reporting guidelines and in the consideration of States parties’ reports, the
Committee has paid much attention to the identification and analysis of resources for children in
national and other budgets.14 No State can tell whether it is fulfilling children’s economic, social
and cultural rights “to the maximum extent of … available resources”, as it is required to do
under article 4, unless it can identify the proportion of national and other budgets allocated to the
social sector and, within that, to children, both directly and indirectly. Some States have claimed
it is not possible to analyse national budgets in this way. But others have done it and publish
annual “children’s budgets”. The Committee needs to know what steps are taken at all levels of
Government to ensure that economic and social planning and decision-making and budgetary
decisions are made with the best interests of children as a primary consideration and that
children, including in particular marginalized and disadvantaged groups of children, are
protected from the adverse effects of economic policies or financial downturns.
52.
Emphasizing that economic policies are never neutral in their effect on children’s rights,
the Committee has been deeply concerned by the often negative effects on children of structural
adjustment programmes and transition to a market economy. The implementation duties of
article 4 and other provisions of the Convention demand rigorous monitoring of the effects of
such changes and adjustment of policies to protect children’s economic, social and cultural
rights.
H. Training and capacity-building
53.
The Committee emphasizes States’ obligation to develop training and capacity-building
for all those involved in the implementation process - government officials, parliamentarians and
members of the judiciary - and for all those working with and for children. These include, for
example, community and religious leaders, teachers, social workers and other professionals,