UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre hosts third Commitment to Children Audit Meeting

Barcelona, 04 March 2011 - The International Panel of the Commitment to Children Audit (CCA) has gathered this week in Florence for the third planning and audit-building meeting. Held at the premises of Unicef Innocenti Research Centre, the main aim of the meeting was to review and agree on the set of indicators that are to be used in the CCA.

Led by UNICEF’s report card author, Peter Adamson, the meeting was attended by former Head of the Strategic Information Section in UNICEF HQ, Gareth Jones, Ferran Casas, professor of social psychology at the University of Girona, Spain, Leonardo Menchini,  researcher (programme specialist) at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre and the GMC’s Executive Coordinator, Miquel de Paladella. The Director of the Innocenti Research Centre, Gordon Alexander and Chris de Neubourg, Chief of Child Poverty and Social and Economic Policy Responses, welcomed the panel to the premises and participated actively during the first part of the meeting.

The International Panel of the CCA first met in Barcelona in June last year to lay the foundations of a measurement tool for the GMC around which the child rights movement could rally, benefit from, provide input to and use as an advocacy and mobilization tool in every country. The Commitment to Children Audit is a GMC-led initiative which attempts to monitor the commitments of governments to children and will shed new light on current available data for tracking child rights as it will measure a country's performance against its economic resources.

The Commitment to Children Audit will shed new light One of the main challenges the CCA faces is to meet the criteria of simplicity and communicability combined with transparency and academic credibility in order for it to be an effective advocacy tool and a widespread long-term reliable tool for the child rights community.