This is an Add-On to the “Universal Periodic Review Toolkit – A guide for country programs”, which contains up-to-date information on the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process.
Save the Children’s Child Rights Governance Global Initiative (CRGI) seeks to strengthen the ability of civil society organisations (CSOs) and child-led groups to hold their Governments to account on their obligations and commitments to children.
Child rights monitoring, through reporting to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the UPR mechanism, is a key tool for improving accountability. This short advocacy guide aims to provide CSOs and child-led groups with a brief overview of the child rights outcomes and lessons learned from the UPR’s first cycle and how this can help improve advocacy for the second cycle through a 10-step guide to successful child rights UPR advocacy.
The Universal Periodic Review Toolkit Add-On is available in English, French and Spanish.
Child rights outcomes: The UPR completed its first cycle in March 2012 with the adoption of the last outcome reports. Although child rights figured prominently throughout the cycle, this did not always translate into concrete outcomes, as only 20% of all UPR recommendations focused on children (source: CRIN).
However, the UPR process and recommendations have shown to be crucial tools to achieve policy change and legal reform. In Nepal, for example, recommendation 108.4 to “expedite the endorsement of long awaited child policy legislation, including the Child Rights Act” resulted in quick enactment of the law.
Save the Children was actively involved in this first cycle, supporting child rights submissions and advocacy on 31 countries. For these countries, at least one of our key child rights issues was raised in 97% of the UPR outcome documents (dialogue and recommendations). Approximately 50% of these key concerns were reflected in UPR recommendations accepted by the State under review.
Lessons learned: Save the Children and other CSOs were the most successful in raising child rights concerns and achieving concrete outcomes when our advocacy was focused, targeted towards key Governments and coordinated at the national and international levels.
There is a need to reinforce linkages between treaty body recommendations, especially Committee on the Rights of the Child Concluding Observations, and UPR recommendations to strengthen outcomes and follow-up.
Finally, more needs to be done to give more visibility to children’s voices in the UPR process, through clear child-friendly guidance, facilitation and support from CSOs.
You can download this toolkit for free here.
