Child Abuse & Neglect 34 (2010) 14

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Child Abuse & Neglect

Introduction

Twenty years of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: Achievements in and challenges for child protection implementation, measurement and evaluation around the world

Keywords:
Convention on the Rights of the Child Childrens rights Child protection Child maltreatment Child welfare

To begin, best wishes for a year lled with peace, justice and well-being for all. This Special Issue on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and Child Protection is Part II, following from the November 2009 Child Abuse & Neglect Special CRC Anniversary Issue Part I. The rst issue focused on progress which had been made 20 years after CRC adoption, in child maltreatment data collection, national surveillance systems and research on violence against children. These experiences and initiatives have been recognized as advancing the rights and protection of children internationally. The Guest Editors are especially pleased to start off the 2010 year for Child Abuse & Neglect readers with a continuing focus on the importance of advancing childrens rights toward stronger protection of all children from all forms of violence, with a special emphasis on child maltreatment research and data collection, but expanded to include perspectives on legal, judicial, systems, as well as socioeconomic and political issues impacting the effective implementation of childrens rights and protection. This issue reminds us that, while the Convention was unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on the 20th of November 1989, and became enforceable from September 2 of 1990, there is still much to be done throughout the world in 2010 to effectively protect children from violence and maltreatment. Insights are shared into the situation of violence against children in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East, recognizing both signicant child protection developments, and the challenging barriers facing professionals in this eld. As noted in the last issue, the CRC is the only international human rights treaty that has near universal ratication, with the exception of only Somalia and the USA, although there currently appears to be some movement in each nation to advance towards ratication. Once again we have invited authors from around the world, seeking to bridge the gap between theory and practice by sharing their empirical and qualitative research in the eld of child maltreatment with the international community. Our goal continues to be to increase the exchange of knowledge, experience and dialogue on child protection practice which is enhanced by the effective leveraging of childrens rights. This issue begins with an invited Commentary which introduces signicant progress for childrens rights in courts throughout Latin America, entitled 20 ANOS DESPUES DE LA CONVENCION DE LOS DERECHOS DEL NINO: Su Incorporacion en las Constituciones de America Latina y la Jurisprudencia de los Tribunales Constitucionales (20 Years Since the Convention on the Rights of the Child: Its incorporation into Latin American National Constitutions and the Jurisprudence of Constitutional Tribunals) by Alejandro Morlachetti, an expert consultant to the United Nations. The Commentary reports on successful legal advances in child protection made possible since the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). According to Morlachetti, CRC ratication has been followed by a process of incorporationcomplete or incompleteof the Convention into national law. Almost all Latin American countries have undertaken legislative and constitutional reforms, which have consistently given the CRC preeminence over internal law (for example, the Constitutions of Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Venezuela, among others). These reforms have opened the door to enable jurisprudence to inter0145-2134/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2009.11.001

Introduction / Child Abuse & Neglect 34 (2010) 14

pret international human rights treaties as having constitutional status in many countries and further, to be immediately applicable without the necessity of States Parties to the CRC rst implementing legislation or additional regulations. This commentary highlights the role that international and comparative law should play in domestic constitutional interpretation as an effort to enforce the CRC and guarantee the full enjoyment of their rights to all children. This Commentary is published in Spanish here and available in English at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/5847-2009-999669988-1554191. However, a second invited Commentary, entitled Persistent Socioeconomic and Political Dilemmas to the Implementation of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in sub-Saharan Africa, contributed by Dr. Munyae Mulinge, points out the serious barriers to child protection in many African countries. Similar situations exist in many countries world-wide. Dr. Mulinge published a rst Commentary on the challenges of implementing childrens rights and protections in sub-Saharan Africa nearly 8 years ago, in 2002. Upon our invitation, Mulinge reviewed the current status of the socioeconomic and political impediments studied in 2002, nding that there have not been major improvements in the well-being of children in Africa since that time. Neither the adoption of supportive continental and regional protocols, nor the passing of supportive legislation and policies by governments have succeeded in actually effecting improved child protection and well-being. Further, Mulinge reports that the major socioeconomic and political conditions prohibiting progress for children in 2002, particularly poverty, rampant corruption, HIV/AIDS, armed conicts and wars, and failure to enforce existing legislation, continue to stand in the way of the realization of childrens rights across most of Africa. Mulinge concludes that African governments must acknowledge and address the specic socioeconomic and political conditions which undermine the protection of the rights of the child. He challenges them to enforce existing legislation, to eradicate poverty and corruption, to control HIV/AIDS, armed conicts and wars, and to raise public awareness about childrens rights. In Analysis of maltreatment experiences of children in protective care in South Korea by Dr. Yanghee Lee and SoYoung Ju, the researchers explored the extent of family maltreatment experiences of children in protective care in South Korea to better understand how maltreated children coped with such experiences. The ndings revealed that experiences of physical abuse very often also involved emotional abuse, and that most offenders were biological parents, mainly in poverty and with alcohol abuse problems. Further, the study identied the majority of children in protective care as being preschoolers and examined the effects of abuse and subsequent lack of contact with their family on these children. The study recommends increased community support of victims of child maltreatment for their full recovery and more comprehensive approaches to treatment and services. These recommendations are aligned with UN Convention on the Rights of the Child recommendations for prevention of violence and intervention care services (Article 19) and full rehabilitation of the child (Article 39). Promising progress was charted in the article Child Abuse and Neglect in Saudi Arabia: Journey of Recognition to Implementation of National Prevention Strategies by Drs Majid Al Eissa and Maha Almuneef, of the National Family Safety Council in Saudi Arabia. Their research was based on a retrospective collection of child abuse and neglect data on children evaluated by the King Abdulaziz Medical City Hospital SCAN team from 2000 to 2008. They studied the increase in and characteristics of reports during that period, in the context of observing the recent development of a system of intervention for the hospital-based child protection center, aligned with UN CRC Article 19. Study ndings revealed that the total number of cases increased 10-fold during the 8-year period, and further, that while the increase was largely in physical abuse in the rst stage of systems development, that the predominant increase in cases became those of neglect during the latter years of the study. The researchers attributed the increase in reporting generally, and the improvement in child abuse and neglect discernment and reporting to the increase of recognition of CAN within the child protection center as well as the successful adoption of a system of intervention, in conjunction with the establishment of mandatory reporting and data collection procedures. Anticipating a continuing increase in CAN reporting, the researchers also projected an increased need for the development and improvement of multi-sectoral services for the abuse victims in their country. This article charts a common course of development in many countries recently implementing CAN reporting systems, professional training and data collection to further inform child protection policy and practice. The article:

is available in Arabic at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/5847-2009-999669988-1554191. An innovative approach to measuring CRC-mandated child protection and well-being progress was presented in the article Monitoring the commitment and child-friendliness of governments: A new approach from Africa by Assefa Bequele and colleagues. While States Parties to the UN CRC are required to demonstrate ongoing progress in their implementation of CRC requirements, the CRC Committee depends on reports and information provided to them or gathered in-country. Currently there doesnt exist, because of challenges for information collection in many areas of child rights and protection and the lack of standards or even guidelines for performance in many areas of protecting children from violence, a single external and systematic approach for monitoring, evaluating and actually measuring progress being made by States Parties. However, the African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) has established a methodology which monitors government performance and compliance in several specic areas with the goal of scoring and ranking each of the 52 African governments in terms of their level

Introduction / Child Abuse & Neglect 34 (2010) 14

of child-friendliness, causes of compliance or non-compliance, and recommendations on what poorly performing African States Parties could do to fulll their CRC obligations in these areas. The ACPF methodology is based on a Child-Friendliness Index (CFI) with standardized indicators on various dimensions, to specically measure child-related services/outcomes, resources and legal and policy framework. Therefore key areas studied were (a) the commitment to children within public policy; (b) the establishment and enforcement of legislation for child protection; (c) the budgets which enable child rights and protection efforts to establish childrens basic needs and full development. ACPF identied several African countries as leaders in child protection, including: Kenya, Madagascar, Burundi, Morocco, Namibia, and Rwanda. Finally, countries which were lagging were also identied and lack of progress analyzed in this article. The approach establishes a practical methodology that could be used or adapted for use by other regions and countries, to more effectively guide progress toward establishing child rights and protection. In Protecting Children from Violence and Maltreatment: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis Assessing the Implementation of U.N. CRC Article 19, Kimberly Svevo-Cianci and colleagues provide international ndings on child protection progress made by States Parties since 1989. Progress was measured regarding the establishment of effective child protection (CP) measures required by CRC Article 19for all children, including the most vulnerable. The article specically explored whether States Parties were establishing the following CP measures effectively: public awareness, CAN research, CAN data collection, national policy/legislation and commitment of nancial resources, CAN reporting systems, and services for child abuse and neglect (CAN) victims, as well as training of CAN professionals. CRC Committee Concluding Observations were used to supplement or verify study respondent information. The study found that 33% of the 42 countries studied had committed to establishing three key CP measures: policy, CAN reporting systems, and services for children. Further, results indicate that child protection judged as comparatively more successful among study countries resulted from having a CP infrastructure (legislation plus services) and at least one information-based intervention support program (CAN reporting, research, and/or data collection). The top-ranked countries included: Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom. The study reinforces the need for governments to take a systems approach to child protection, by integrating policy/legislation, information-based programs and social services, as well as professional training and public awareness raising. Finally, a lack of information on actual outcomes for children in most study countries was recognized as a drawback for this study and as a severe barrier to the effective development of programs and services for child protection in most countries. The CRC requires States Parties to collect and analyze such information to inform the effective development of child protection in every country. In many societies, overrepresentation of minority and indigenous populations of child welfare system is a well documented fact. Even among the most vulnerable populations, indigenous populations are often over represented in child welfare system. Status of a child and structural risk factors, such as poverty, affecting the family are most common reasons. In their article, Placement Decisions and Disparities among Aboriginal Groups: an Application of the Decision Making Ecology through Multi-Level Analysis, Fluke and colleagues used the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect-1998 data set to examine the inuence of clinical and organizational characteristics of out-of-home placement decisions and to identify possible decision-making inuences related to disparities in Aboriginal children in Canada. The authors conrmed that disparities among Aboriginal children in child welfare decision-making exist at the agency level. Lack of appropriate resources at the agency or community level could be one of the reasons for overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in Canadian foster care system. These ndings present an opportunity for similar research into the issues of indigenous or Aboriginal children and child welfare decision-making in other nations, better informing child rights advocates and governments on how to accomplish the goal of childrens rights and protection for all children, with no discrimination (Article 2). A complete picture of the extent of child maltreatment will never be known. What is even more disappointing is the fact that a large portion of victims of abuse are never admitted or reported to child protection services. Fallon and colleagues bring to the attention of the readers that how to measure identied maltreatment is something that increasing jurisdictions are grappling with. The authors of Methodological Challenges in Measuring Child Maltreatment identify problematic inconsistencies and variations in denitions used make it difcult not only to obtain a clear estimate of child maltreatment, but also make it difcult to compare incidence among different jurisdictions. In an effort to assist researchers and policy analysts with interpretation of datasets and to assist in adapting surveillance systems according to respective needs, the authors compare three major child maltreatment surveillance methods currently used in North America: Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS); National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS); and National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS). The authors highlight the strengths and limitations of each surveillance system. This Special Issue shares international perspectives and the understanding of how professionals, researchers, and governments around the world are working to advance child protection, as required by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, especially focusing on Article 19. It reects, briey, a few of the myriad challenges faced in the critical movement to provide stronger protection of all children from violence and maltreatment. It also reects exciting progress being made in many countries. We hope that the double CRC Special Issues (November 2009 and January 2010) have succeeded in providing essential practical information for Child Abuse & Neglect readers to better understand, address and overcome the signicant problem of violence against children in their countries and internationally. Further, we hope that this special issue will contribute to advancements around the world in ensuring the rights, protection and well-being of all children. Again, we thank

Introduction / Child Abuse & Neglect 34 (2010) 14

the Editorial Board of Child Abuse & Neglect for making the decision for the 20th Anniversary Commemorative Special Issues and for inviting us to serve as guest editors. Finally, we thank the authors for sharing their important work and research with the international community through these issues. Kimberly Svevo-Cianci Child Rights and Protection Consultancy-International, International Institute of Child Rights and Development, Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria, Canada Yanghee Lee Department of Child Psychology & Education, Department of Human Resources and Development, SKK Law School (Joint Appointments), Sungkyunkwan University, 53 Myeongnyun Dong 3 Ka, Jongno Gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea
Corresponding

author address: Child Rights and Protection Consultancy, 1040 Wintergreen Terrace, Batavia, IL 60510, USA. 2 November 2009 Available online 6 January 2010