Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) Toolkit for Economic & Social Policies

1. Margaret Wachenfeld – UNICEF Brussels Office & Rachel Marcus, Consultant Integrating a Child Lens into Economic & Social Policy Analysis – using the Poverty & Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) model--A Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) Tool for Economic& Social Policies

2. Looking for Upstream Leverage • Integrate consideration of children into key policies • especially policies where they are not typically considered Analyse & highlight the impact of policies on children • Integrate children into the work of other key players

3. Rationale for Developing Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) Toolkit • Effects of policy reforms on children not routinely assessed ex ante • Although this is an obligation under UN Convention on the Rights of the Child • Conceptual Constraints • Children’s lack of voice & relative powerlessness of child advocates • Lack of understanding of importance of protecting children at early stages of their lives – negative impacts can have long-term effects on individuals and society • Disciplinary bias tending to concentrate on economic effects • Technical Constraints • Data constraints (much data is at household level) but greater disaggregation often possible

4.  Integrate consideration of children into key policies   Highlight the impact of policies on children   Integrate children into the work of other key players Added Bonus Build on & integrate into existing approaches to analyse impacts of proposed policies on the poor & vulnerable -- Poverty & Social Impact Analysis (PSIA)  Modify the approach to include specific consideration of & impacts on children  Tool can be integrated into PSIA or used as stand-alone tool PSIA used by World Bank & other donors (UK, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway)  Improving on approaches used in existing CRIA tools by basing analysis on rigorous analysis (quantitative & qualitative) Response: Developing Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) Tool

5. Integrating Key Frameworks & Tools • Integrates • Key Foundation: UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) • Key Analysis Framework: Poverty & Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) • Key Tool: Social scientific analysis of intra-household dynamics and outcomes for children – both qualitative and quantitative

6. Transmission Channels: • Employment • Prices • Assets • Transfers & Taxes • Access to goods & services • Public Financing • Authority Existing Poverty & Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) Conceptual Framework Policy Reforms & Programmes Impacts transmitted through

7. CRIA Conceptual Framework Child Specific Summary diagram here (will be slightly revised version)

8. What is Different About a Child Lens? Expanding Attention to Children in PSIA Key Concepts: • Challenging assumption that impacts on children mirror impacts on households more generally – disaggregating beyond household level • Paying attention to possible impacts of policies on all areas of children’s rights • Involving children as participants in policy making process as stakeholders

9. What is Different About a Child Lens? Understanding Impacts on Children at All Levels: • *Micro-level: Expands understanding of intra-household processes that lead to impacts on children • Meso-level: Focusing on transmission channels that have a particular importance for children such as access to services or transfers to households • Macro-level: Highlighting how macroeconomic policy & trends acts through transmission channels to have an impact on the proximate causes of child well-beingeg policy changes such as devaluation can affect prices of key goods, and thus consumption patterns and children's wellbeing.

10. What is Different About a Child Lens? • Addressing Missing Dimensions that are Important to Children • Considering not just short or medium term, but also longer-term effects of policy, including inter-generational effects • Deepening the analysis of indirect, 2nd & 3rd order effects of policy that are often important for children • Highlighting the role of social capital in children’s development • Analysing social risks for children arising from social arrangements or cultural norms

11. What is Different About a Child Lens? Conclusion: • Need to highlight 3 areas in which further work is needed to understand how policy effects are transmitted to children • Intra-household processes to go beyond household level analysis • Analyse & bring in greater understanding of wider social processes and how they affect children eg changing social capital, social inequality • Outcomes for children, particularly in terms of development, participation and protection

12. Steps in a CRIA/Child Sensitive PSIA Consultation with stakeholders, especially children & young people • Broadly follows PSIA sequence  Start with scoping assessment  Develop Conceptual Framework • understand transmission channels  Ask the right questions  Gather data and information • on micro-level impacts, intermediary processes and political & institutional context  Analyse Impacts  Make Recommendations • including possible mitigation or compensation measures and risk assessment  Foster Policy Debate • Monitor & Evaluate

13. Ask the Right Questions • About PSIA Transmission Channels • And adding questions on: • Household responses • ex: changing patterns of consumption that have effects on children like school expenditures, changing patterns of labour allocation, changes in caring activities • Access to services • ex: with a focus on quality in addition to accessibility • Social capital / cohesion • ex. changing patterns of reciprocal child care in the community as result of breakdown in social cohesion

14. Ask the Right Questions • Additional Questions (con’t) • Mediating Factors– getting these more explicitly into both questions and analysis • Outcomes for Children • Survival & development • Ex impacts on health & nutrition • Ex impacts on emotional well beingn • Protection • Ex impacts on child labour rates, insufficient care • Participation • Ex access to information

15. Analyse Impacts on Children • Guidance on quantitative analysis will include: • Building child-focused vulnerability profiles from household data • Estimating scale and magnitude of likely responses to policy change among particular types of households with children • Predicting longer-term feedback effects on economy and how these may alter responses predicted in the short to medium term relevant to children • Quantifying effects on public service provision where relevant to children’s well-being

16. Analyse Impacts • Qualitative analysis - • of impacts eg service providers’ views of how service provision may be affected and possible effects on children • Risk analysis – • indicating possible longer-term negative social effects on certain groups eg if reforms may lead to social unrest and dislocation • Institutional and political analysis - • eg understanding the balance of interests in favour of/ against child-specific mitigatory measures

17. Engaging Children and Young People as Stakeholders • Recognising • Children & young people as legitimate stakeholders – like other groups of stakeholders • Their right to participate enshrined in CRC • That their perspectives may be quite different from adults • Guidance on • Ethical issues of child & young people’s participation • Engaging as stakeholders in different parts of the process • Collecting data from & with children & young people • Analysis & developing recommendations with children

18. Rapid CRIA • CRIA-lite v. Full CRIA • Screening to establish what is likely to be critical for children and what isn’t • Consider fewer issues and focus on a few strategic priorities • Less likely to involve new data collection or complex analysis of existing primary data • More likely to draw principally on existing literature • Probably involves less stakeholder participation • May concentrate more on short-term effects

19. CRIA Experience: Proposed Electricity Tariff Reform, Bosnia & Herzegovina • 2 Objectives • pilot CRIA approach & make recommendations on methodology • identify possible impacts of reforms on children • Methodology • literature review • analysis of existing quantitative data (LSMS, HBS, MICS) • new survey with sub-sample of MICS households • qualitative research with children, parents & service providers, focusing on disadvantaged groups

20. BiH CRIA: Lessons Learnt • Mixed (qual-quant) methodology effectively integrated and improved quality of findings. • Each type of data helped contextualise findings of others & filled gaps • Integration with federal statistical infrastructure very helpful (survey could use experienced interviewers) • Greater integration with other research policy initiatives would have been helpful • More time needed for training qualitative researchers – implications for budgeting, also for quality of analysis possible in rapid CRIA

21. Issues for Discussion Key Concepts: Conceptual framework & guidance on framing questions & data gathering – are there missing elements? Rapid CRIA: Is it possible to specify core elements of a rapid CRIA? Is it entirely context-specific? Sector Specific Annexes: what would be good test cases/ examples? Uptake: How to maximise integration with existing processes and initiatives, to increase likelihood of CRIA being carried out?