The Guide is now available- click here.
Read below the cover note from Elizabeth Gibbons, Chief of the Global Policy Section:
Dear friends,
It is with great pleasure that I write you now to share the freshly completed Guide for preparation of the Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities, in which 40 UNICEF offices are participating, with the support of FA5 Thematic Funding.
The attached Guide provides a framework for the teams of national policy and statistical experts who, with your support, will come together in each participating country to undertake the collaborative work of the study. It introduces the policy and statistical templates and suggests a method of work to yield nationally relevant and internationally comparable evidence-based policy analyses on the extent and nature of child poverty, the situation and characteristics of children affected (their gender, ethnicity, geographic location, age, family structure, and household wealth) and the policies that are both failing and aiding children to escape poverty and its accompanying deprivations. Inside the Guide, you will find the conceptual framework of the study, the proposed country report outline, and the templates teams will use for country-level data creation and analysis, as well as a model TOR, and contact information for all UNICEF Focal Points.
Please note that the Child Poverty and Disparities Study is an input into a new generation of situation analyses that will leverage policies and resources for children and women; it concentrates on analysing the underlying and basic causes determining gender equality and child outcomes, including women's employment and control of resources. The content of the enclosed Guide has been coordinated with that of the revised Programme Guidance on the Situation Analysis to be issued shortly.
Since you will share the Guide with your team of national counterparts, to the extent possible, it has been stripped of much UN/UNICEF jargon, and has substituted more generally understood terms for those we use in HRBAD, (which we might prefer, but which are not likely to be familiar to many counterparts who will be the primary users of the Guide). Nevertheless, the study applies a human rights approach by seeking to identify which children are being left behind in development efforts, whether due to discrimination, poverty or other factors; by analysing why state laws and policies, and civil society efforts, are failing children - girls and boys; and by seeking the views of children through opinion polls and focus group discussions, with a view to training the eye of policy makers on solutions that help meet CRC obligations and advance gender equality. The study, through its analytical approach, applies HR principles of universality and non-discrimination, participation, accountability and the rule of law.
The Guide is a lengthy document, but it should include most everything you need to start and carry out work on the study in your country. Please read it carefully.
Inevitably, there will be some areas where further clarification is needed, and aspects upon which we can improve. Please contact Gaspar Fajth, Head, Economic and Social Policy Unit, GPS, with any queries or suggestions (gfajth@unicef.org). Gaspar is leading the Global Study, with my support and that of Katherine Holland and Carolyn Douglas. All questions are welcome; indeed we hope the Guide will help to 'kick off' a lively dialogue among us. Ongoing exchange of information, ideas, questions, suggestions and lessons learned will be essential in all countries. To this end, we have also set up an on-line home for the Study at www.unicefglobalstudy.blogspot.com. Here we will post updates, answer questions, and share resource documents as we move forward with the Study. We are all very much united in this work.
In the spirit of Focus Area 5's commitment to partnerships, this Guide has been produced with much appreciated input from many of you, in addition to the comments and feedback of many colleagues within UNICEF and at other institutions. Much more could be said about its contents, but since there is already plenty of reading in the Guide, let me simply wish you all best, as you now get down to the Study's practical work of placing children at the heart of the poverty reduction agenda, and identifying policy responses best suited to achieving children’s rights and ending child poverty.
Best wishes,
Liz
