THE STOCKHOLM COMMITMENT ON CHILD PROTECTION
[5 November 2008 Draft]
CHILD PROTECTION ACTION SUMMIT
Stockholm, Sweden
12-14 November 2008
We, the members of the Care and Protection of Children Interagency Learning Network (CPC Learning Network), put forth and affirm our collective concern for the care, protection and well-being of children affected by armed conflicts, natural disasters, and other crisis situations:
Recognizing that the care and protection of children requires high standards of evidence regarding programme outcomes and impacts,
Deeply concerned that the current evidence base in the young field of child protection is weak and that accurate methods do not exist currently for measuring program outcomes or impact. Further data collection systems for identifying and quantifying the numbers of children whose protection rights have been violated by actions such as recruitment and gender-based violence are weak to non-existent,
Understanding that the implementation of protections for children as defined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and relevant UN Security Council Resolutions require robust yet practical methodologies and a strong evidence base regarding child protection, and
Asserting our collective responsibility to build the evidence base in the field of child protection,
We commit ourselvesover the next three years to:
- Establish a cadre of Southern and Northern partners who actively work together in the CPC Learning Network to improve evidence-based practice and policy in the field of child protection; and
- Build a body of evidence-based good practice on community-based approaches to address the needs of children, women, and vulnerable people, thereby professionalizing and increasing the accountability of the young field of child protection and establishing the expectation that all child protection programmes will produce meaningful and measurable benefits for affected people;
- Create a more favorable policy environment for children in emergencies, with a higher percentage of donor contributions allocated to initiatives based on proven practices.
