A city-wide Children's Rights Strategy: developing a detailed, comprehensive strategy or agenda for building a Child Friendly City, based on the Convention

States have been encouraged to develop national plans of action for children (by the World Summit for Children in 1990 and by the 2002 UN General Assembly Special Session for Children). They have been urged to base them on the Convention. The Committee on the Rights of the Child strongly encourages States to develop unified strategies or agendas embracing the whole Convention. Local Children's Rights Strategies need to be rationally linked to any such national processes. These local strategies or plans of action can act as a bridge between national planning and the city-level process which is seeking to make reality of the Convention for children.

A World Fit for Children, the Outcome Document from the 2002 Special Session on Children, highlights the importance of state governments developing partnership with, among others, local governments and authorities, helping to ensure "that children are at the centre of agendas for development. By building on ongoing initiatives, such as child-friendly communities and cities without slums, mayors and local leaders can significantly improve the lives of children" (para. 31(iii)).

Ensuring a unified, rights-based approach to all services for children at city-level demands adoption of principles, rooted in the Convention, and development of a unified Children's Rights Strategy, ideally with goals and targets. Because so many departments and strands of government, so many different services impact on children directly or indirectly, coordination is essential. If developing the Strategy is undertaken as a cross-government exercise, the need for coordination will reveal itself in the process. The Strategy can then provide the unifying focus, defining the purpose of coordination (a dedicated unit or coordinating mechanism close to the heart of local government may be needed as the instrument to lead coordination.

Developing a Strategy focused on building a Child Friendly City should aim to engage children and all other citizens. Local-level processes need to be linked to national planning; they also need to be reflected at local and neighbourhood levels of government. The Children's Rights Strategy requires continuous commitment at the highest political level in the local government, to give it sufficient authority to really change things for children.

Going beyond statements of policy and principle, the Strategy needs to set real and achievable targets in relation to the full range of economic, social and cultural and civil and political rights for children. More than a list of good intentions, it must include a description of the process of implementation for all children in the City. A key purpose of the Strategy is fulfilling the non-discrimination principle in the Convention.

Once drafted, if the Strategy is to be influential, it needs to be well known to all those involved in implementation at municipal, community and neighbourhood level. It needs to be made available to children, translated into appropriate and accessible languages and forms and to those working with and for children.

Developing a Strategy requires considerable effort, and it is not a one-time process. The goals and priorities set in the Strategy will need to be updated, and so it should include provisions for monitoring and review. These must be able to assess the Strategy's impact on children's real lives, which of course again highlights the importance of engaging with children directly.

EXAMPLES

The CFC Secretariat has gathered a number of examples of city-wide children's rights strategy at both local and national levels of government, and from low-, middle- and high-income nations.

Each example includes the following documents:

• A worksheet describing the project (accessed from the CFC Database)
• Other documents, such as publications, guides, reports and strategies, developed by the project (when available)
• A project review prepared by the CFC Secretariat, based upon in-depth documentation of the project and developed on the basis of a standard research protocol (when available)
• Tools developed by the project (when available)