Abstract
Most governments have an impressive record in their formal accession to the relevant international child rights treaties. But the extent of their commitment to children varies widely and the gap between promises and reality remains wide. In response, we, at The African Child Policy Forum, developed an approach to measure government performance in realising children’s rights and ensuring their wellbeing. The approach quantitatively measures how well governments are doing in meeting their national and international obligations to children through the Child-friendliness Index. This composite index is used to assess and rank the performance of all 52 African governments using a common set of indicators. It provides an indication of how prioritised children’s issues are in African governments’ policy agendas, and the extent to which those agendas are child-friendly. According to the Child-friendliness Index ranking, Mauritius and Namibia emerged as the first and second most child-friendly governments, respectively, in Africa. In addition to these two, the “most child-friendly governments” group consists of both countries with high economic performance as well as those with a low status. The analysis also showed that national wealth and a high level of development are not guarantees of child wellbeing. The results further indicated that change and progress towards ensuring child wellbeing are possible and feasible even at very low levels of development and calls for: (a) adoption and implementation of effective laws and policies; and (b) a policy of child budgeting that prioritises the needs of children.
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Notes
Correlation coefficient is a value that shows the strength of association or the tendency of the variables to increase or decrease together. Its value ranges from -1 to 1.
Relationship in which a change in one variable is accompanied by a change in the other, based on complex interaction rather than direct cause.
‘The Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict’ and ‘The Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Pornography’.
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The African Child Policy Forum (ACPF)
is an independent pan-African policy research and advocacy centre based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Its mission is to put children in Africa on the political and public agenda, focusing on the development and implementation of effective policies and laws. The work of the ACPF is rights-based, inspired by universal values, and informed by global experiences and knowledge. ACPF aims to provide opportunities for dialogue, to contribute to improved knowledge of the problems facing African children, to identify policy options, and to strengthen the capacity of NGOs and governments to develop and implement effective pro-child policies and programmes.
Appendices
Appendix 1a Spearman's Rank Correlation Matrix for Child-Outcome Indicators*
Appendix 1b Spearman's Rank Correlation Matrix for Budgetary Indicators
Appendix 1c Summary of Indicator Values for each Component That Make Up the Legal and Policy Dimension
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Mekonen, Y. Measuring Government Performance in Realising Child Rights and Child Wellbeing: The Approach and Indicators. Child Ind Res 3, 205–241 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-009-9047-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-009-9047-5