The European Union has helped to transform thelives of children everywhere in the world. In line withits commitments to Agenda 2030, and the obligationof its Member States to the Convention on theRights of the Child, the EU has inspired legislativechanges and policies to better protect and promotechildren’s rights, and – crucially – it has investedsignificant financial resources, both within andoutside of the EU, to offer better and faireropportunities to children, especially the mostvulnerable ones.

However, such investment and commitment tochildren’s rights is not always visible to governmentsor the public. Under the existing monitoringframework, the EU is just not able to provide anaccurate answer to the question of how much itinvests in children.

A fragmented and partial picture of the overall impact ofEU actions, lacking overall consistency, monitoring andaccountability, is not sufficient to accurately display EUefforts, nor can it contribute to identifying gaps betweenpolicy and financial commitments and incentivise effortsto close them.

In July 2019, presenting the European Commissionpolitical guidelines, President Ursula von der Leyenexplicitly committed to step up the EU’s commitment toprotect and promote children’s rights. She entrustedVice-President Šuica to prepare a comprehensiveStrategy on the Rights of the Child. But how will the EUknow that it made good on its commitment, if it is notable to measure its financial investment and report on it?If the EU is to address persisting and emergingchallenges to children’s rights, capturing the full extent ofits finances aiming to realise the rights of all children is anecessary precondition.

UNICEF Proposal for a Child Marker:Stepping up monitoring of EUinvestments in children

A Child Marker for Monitoring

EU INVESTMENTS IN CHILDREN

Background

ADVOCACY BRIEF

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Girl with loudspeaker

©UNICEF/UN0340776/Nesbitt

MAY 2021

UNICEF Proposal for a Child Marker: Stepping up monitoring of EU investments in children

How can the existing monitoring framework be improved?

Comprehensively cover all fundinginstruments;Regularly monitor and publicly report oninvestments, ideally on a yearly basis;Mandatorily apply to EU institutions andMember States joint funding.

A commitment of strengthening the EU monitoringframework for investments benefiting children isparticularly relevant as programming for the new2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF)is underway and in light of the EU Strategy on theRights of the Child – which will aim to translate theEU political commitments and obligations to childrights into a set of concrete result-oriented actions.

In order to fill the existing reporting gaps, a ChildMarker should be introduced to:

Developing the necessary methodology and securingpolitical support to track global EU funding is part of aprocess.

The first step should be the introduction of aninternal Child Marker to monitor EU externalfinancing from the new Neighbourhood,Development and International CooperationInstrument (NDICI) - Global Europe.

This would function as a key monitoring andaccountability tool in the context of Agenda 2030 andwith a view to tracking aid in support of theimplementation of the Sustainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs) commitments on children.

See UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General comment no. 19 on public budgeting for the realization of children'srights (art.4), 2016, https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/838730?ln=en

2UNICEF Proposal for a Child Marker: Stepping up monitoring of EU investments in children

Children playing in the yard of ECD Center in Gadime, Kosovo ©UNICEF/UN0425502/Karahoda

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Why a Child Marker?

1. Children represent a specific population

As recognised by the UN Convention on the Rightsof the Child: children, defined as human beingsbelow the age of 18, are recognised internationallyas a group that has its own specific rights. They arenot 'just' young human beings. Because of theirvulnerabilities and dependence towards adults, theyare entitled to special protections by States andsocieties, and the provision of services adapted totheir evolving needs.

In all circumstances and contexts (migration, poverty,disability, minority etc.), children and their rights andneeds should be explicitly and specifically identifiedand answered.

2. Child investments are cross-cutting

The Child Rights ‘Compendium’, which providesan overview of EU development cooperationsupport to children’s rights, is based on akeyword search methodology, follows a sectoral,not a transversal approach and is not a regularexercise.

The Revised EU Results Framework, whichmeasures results against the SDGs, includes veryfew indicators specifically tracking investments forchildren, age-disaggregation efforts and agebrackets are not consistent across indicators.

Existing horizontal markers, such as the OECDpolicy markers (gender, Rio) and DG INTPAmarkers (migration, digitalisation, COVID-19),currently used to track ODA allocation, do notallow age-disaggregation nor do they offer anyinformation on how children benefit from thesethematic funds.

Age-disaggregation efforts have not advancedconsistently across and within EuropeanCommission DGs in external relations. Forexample, DG ECHO’s gender-age marker followsa different methodology and cannot be scaled-upto cover ODA from other DGs. Age-disaggregation for DG INTPA-managedprogrammes, while encouraged, is still voluntaryand without a consistent methodology, meaningthe quantity and quality of available data canhardly provide an accurate picture of EUinvestments in children. In addition, DG INTPAinformation reporting systems (CRIS/OPSYS) arecurrently technically unfit to extract data onchildren.

3. Existing EU horizontal tracking tools do notprovide a full picture.

UNICEF, Progress for Every Child in the SDG Era, 2018, https://data.unicef.org/resources/progress-for-every-child-2018/

UNICEF, Invest – Social Spending and Progress on Results for Children, Adolescents & Youth, 2020,https://www.unicef.org/media/64141/file/HLPF_2020_2PAGER_FINAL_Investing_in_children.pdf

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European Commission Staff Working Document, A Revised EU International Cooperation andDevelopment Results Framework, 2018https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/10102/2018/EN/SWD-2018-444-F1-EN-MAIN-PART-1.PDF

The lack of consistent age-disaggregation categories means that the existing few data available is notcomparable, and given that information is reported in the comments section, it also cannot besystematically extracted and compiled.

UNICEF Proposal for a Child Marker: Stepping up monitoring of EU investments in children

Investments to deliver life-changing programmesfor children – which are critical to achievinginclusive, equitable and sustainable development –have an intrinsic cross-cutting nature. Child rightsare indeed inter-related, indivisible andinterdependent, meaning the enjoyment of oneright is often impacted by the fulfillment or denial ofanother. Proving this, the existing 44 SDGindicators that explicitly refer to children, cutacross 10 SDGs.

The interventions that address child, adolescentand youth-focused SDGs in particular cover avariety of sectors. Beyond the more obviousimpacts that activities in sectors such as health,education and nutrition have on children, there is awide range of horizontal interventions like socialprotection, climate, energy, and transport withtremendous potential to benefit children. Forinstance, investments that support the school-to-work transition are commonly captured byeducation, labour, business development andsocial protection budgets.

Monitoring these types of investments cannot beachieved via a sectoral approach, which is whyexisting classifications by sector (OECD DAC CRSpurpose codes) are not sufficient to track the fullamount of aid that supports the realisation ofchildren’s rights.

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Providing a baseline to measure trends overtime, due to yearly reporting of data, and totrack fluctuations due to changes in policy andpolitical commitments;

Providing an analysis of spending prioritisationby countries, regions and sectors, as it can becross-filtered with regional and sectorialcriteria;

Increasing awareness of the cross-cuttingnature of child rights during programming;

Supporting the operationalisation of child rightsmainstreaming;

Harmonising financial reporting practices onchild rights throughout NDICI.

Building on existing methodology developed inthe areas of gender, climate, migration,digitalisation, so to facilitate technicalimplementation as well as practicality for endusers;

Applying in parallel to the OECD DAC sectorand purpose codes to capture the cross-cuttingnature of child rights;

Providing a quantitative estimate of EUdevelopment aid commitments (i.e. plannedinvestments, not disbursements) on child rights,rather that exact amounts;

Providing an ex-ante assessment to occur atproject level, and not reflectingimpact/outcomes, for which additionalmonitoring and evaluation efforts will benecessary;

Applying to all NDICI projects and programmesand funding modalities.

C-2: When respecting, protecting or fullfilling childrights is a principal objective.

C-1: When respecting, protecting or fullfilling childrights is a significant objective.

C-0: When respecting, protecting or fullfilling childrights is not targeted as an objective.

C-2 (principal objective): The respect, protection orfullfillment of child rights is fundamental to the designof the action and as such, it is the main explicitobjective of the intervention. Therefore, the actionwould not take place if child rights are not included.100% of the funding of the action will be counted asrespecting, protecting or fullfilling children’s rights.

C-1 (significant objective): The respect, protectionor fullfillment of child rights, although important, isnot the principal reason for undertaking the actionbut it is at least one objective of the intervention.40% of the funding of the action will be counted asrespecting, protecting or fullfilling children’s rights.

C-0 (not relevant): The respect, protection orfullfillment of child rights is not targeted in theintervention. 0% of the funding of the action will becounted as respecting, protecting or fullfillingchildren’s rights.

As other policy markers, the Child Marker can take threevalues:

The Child Marker would allow to identify activitiestargeting children, including the most disadvantaged,deprived or discriminated against, according to thefollowing scoring system:

Objectives

How would a Child Marker work?

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Methodology Principles

Definition

UNICEF Proposal for a Child Marker: Stepping up monitoring of EU investments in children

Child survival and thriving: health (includingimmunisation), nutrition

Child learning: education (formal and informal;early, primary and secondary education, includingvocational training)

Child protection from violence, exploitation andharmful practices: birth registration, childmarriage, child labour, gender-based violence,protection from conflicts, online violence etc.

A safe, healthy and clean environment forchildren: WASH, climate change and environment

A fair chance for every child: poverty, socialprotection

Child participation in decision-making

Investments benefiting children (defined as humanbeings below the age of 18) focus on the followingdimensions of child rights:

Situation analysis concerning childrenChild indicatorsAge-disaggregation

The objective of respecting, protecting or fullfillingthe rights of children is explicitly included in activitydocumentation through specific measures,including:

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Application Minimum Criteria for Eligibility

UNICEF Proposal for a Child Marker: Stepping up monitoring of EU investments in children

Putting the Child Marker into practice

Is the respect, protection orfullfillment of child rights

somewhere targeted in theproject?

Would this project have beeninitiated if the respect, protection or

fullfillment of child rights was notmentioned in the objective(s)?

Is the respect, protection orfullfillment of child rights included

in the project design?

0 (not relevant)

2 (principal objective)

1 (significant objective)

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

No

General objective: to contribute to better educationservices for vulnerable children in Lebanon, throughaccess to quality education.

Specific objective: to facilitate access to formalbasic education for Syrian and Lebanese childrenduring school years 18/19 and 19/20.

General objective: to contribute to theimprovement of the lives of children and victims ofGender-based Violence living in Lebanon throughthe continuation of preventive and remedialprotection activities under the National Plan toSafeguard Children and Women in Lebanon in2019-2020, while, at the same time, reinforcing andrendering the existing protection system moresustainable.

Example of Projects

Supporting Access to Formal Education forSyrian Refugee and Lebanese Girls andBoys in Lebanon's Public Schools

Examples of projects that could be marked as C-2 (principal objective)

6UNICEF Proposal for a Child Marker: Stepping up monitoring of EU investments in children

Advancing Child Protection and Gender-Based Violence system strengthening inLebanon

General objective: to increase the population'suniversal social protection coverage in partnercountries preferably but not limited to those benefitingfrom EU funded budget support operations.

Specific objective 1: to improve partner countries’design and financing of social protection systems insupport of their efforts towards SDGs 1 and 10.

Specific objective 2: to support governments inimplementing and monitoring effective gender-sensitive and disability-inclusive social protectionsystems and programmes for all while ensuringfinancial sustainability and macroeconomic stability.

Result 2.1: Strengthened capacities of partnercountries to achieve the best impact of diversifiedsources of funding for social protection, prioritizingwomen, children, persons with disabilities,informal economy and migrant workers.

General objective: The general objective of theAction is to improve the quality of life of women,children and men through contributing to increasedaccess to safe, adequate and sustainable watersupply and sanitation in locations of higher humanconcentration (hospitals, schools and majormarketplaces).

Specific objective 1: Improved equitable access tosafe and affordable drinking water for all in urbanareas.

Specific objective 2: Improved adequate andequitable sanitation and hygiene for all in urban areas,paying special attention to the needs of women andgirls and those in vulnerable situations, includingimproved nutrition for children in schools.

Support to national Water, Sanitation andHygiene (WASH) policy

Example of projects that could be marked as C-1 (significant objective)

Improving synergies between socialprotection and Public Finance Management

7UNICEF Proposal for a Child Marker: Stepping up monitoring of EU investments in children

Example of Projects