The GlobalChild platform is a comprehensive child rights monitoring platform developed under the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.
The platform, developed through 5 years of intense research and development, is comprised of 41 sets of indicators that will enable all 197 UN member states that have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) to monitor their efforts to fulfill children’s rights. In late 2021, the platform development came to its completion, and was launched in Canada via the Canadian Launch of the GlobalChild platform webinar.
Subsequent to this launch and discussions with Belgium’s National Commission on the Rights of the Child, the international Steering Committee of the project designated Belgium to be the platform’s first international pilot site.
The BE-Pilot of GlobalChild is a 2-year plan currently in its preparatory phase. This pilot, using the 41 indicator sets of the GlobalChild platform, will take an inventory of the structures and processes in place in Belgium to support the 41 substantive rights of the children under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The collected data on these structures and processes will be examined vis-à-vis the outcome data at the level of children which will also be collected through the outcome-related indicators of the GlobalChild platform. Examination of these data sets (the structure-, process- and outcome-related data for every right) will reveal the associations between them, highlight the strengths, and bring the gaps in the capacities to the forefront of the attention of the decisionmakers. The BE-Pilot is conducted in close partnership with the National Commission on the Rights of the Child.
The GlobalChild platform is a social innovation that can address the challenges associated with improving the fulfillment of children’s rights in Belgium. Using this platform, we have the capacity to monitor government commitments; establish baseline data for the country, considering Belgium’s decentralized governance structure, and track progress through repeated data collection.
Data collected through GlobalChild will identify the existing, and missing, government capacities in support of children’s rights and will facilitate the development of evidence-informed policies and programs in Belgium. When used in this manner, the platform will result in steady incremental improvements in children’s rights, and, as a result of their development, will produce transformative social outcomes.
