For every child
Health, Education, Equality, Protection
ADVANCE HUMANITY
For every child
An International Secretariat for Child Friendly Cities was created in 2000 at UNICEF, Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy by UNICEF, UN-HABITAT, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Environment, Government of Italy, the Italian National Committee for UNICEF and the Istituto degli Innocenti. Consistent with the mandate of the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre to promote understanding of child rights, the CFC Secretariat collects, documents, distils and disseminates experience on local strategies to implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child and pursue the Millennium Development Goals.
The Child Friendly Cities movement has evolved as a network of committed and interested parties, a flexible and organic approach that has captured a rich and diverse range of experiences, and permitted the integration of a variety of programme components. However, this structure makes it difficult to focus on the technical and scientific capacity needed to process and standardize methods and techniques that are succeeding on the ground. It also makes it hard to monitor the impact of single interventions on the lives of children and communities. The CFC Secretariat was established to strengthen the network by making information and tools available to partners, researching and sharing municipal innovations that benefit children, serving programme and policy efforts, and distilling lessons from the field in a systematic manner.
The Secretariat is housed at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre (IRC), Florence, in the Spedale degli Innocenti, an historic building that opened in 1445 as the first foundling hospital in Europe. IRC is the main research arm of UNICEF, helping to shape the organization's human rights agenda for children. Since its creation in 1988, IRC has provided solid data on the changing needs of children in both high- and low-income countries. Its strong focus on children's rights helps UNICEF and its partners promote a new global ethic for children based on their fundamental human rights.
From its inception, the CFC Secretariat has drawn on the knowledge and experience of practitioners, researchers and administrators. Recognized experts and advocates, municipalities, central and local governments, senior administrators and relevant experts advise the Secretariat on scientific and research activities of the programme and help identify good practices, innovations and lessons learned to be included in the CFC Database. The scientific advisers focus on the Secretariat's ongoing activities relating to research, the database, information and data-gathering.
