Sudan Child Rights Governance
The Problem: Children are the main victims of wars, disaster, conflicts, unrests as well as deterioration of the political and economic situations. Sudan has experienced all the above-mentioned challenges, which have seriously impacted the situation of children and the realization of their rights. The law reform and legal framework was one of the main issues that needed high attention. Moreover, the role of government as main stakeholder responsible and accountable for fulfilling children rights needs to be promoted and strengthened.
What We Do
Save the Children’s Child Rights Governance Program and in partnership with civil society organizations, child led groups, government and other stakeholders strives to strengthening state institutions and mechanisms for the implementation and monitoring of children’s rights; increasing awareness and capacity among civil society to promote and realize children rights and hold duty bearers accountable. We also work with the children to increase their awareness and capacity to advocate for their rights and articulate their views in advocacy campaigns and core planning processes.
CHILD RIGHTS MONITORING:
We support the government, civil society organization, involving children, to report on implementation of children rights as well as fulfillment of recommendations and concluding observations of both ACERWC and the UNCRC committee. Moreover, Save the Children is also advocating together with the NCCW for the government to sign and ratify the ‘3rd Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a Communication Procedure’ established by the UN Committee.’ The protocol allows the committee to oversee implementation of the Convention and to receive and examine individual complaints from children.
STRENGTHENING NATIONAL SYSTEMS:
Save the Children works hand in hand with the National Council for Child Welfare (NCCW) and builds its capacity further to effectively monitor the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as the Child Act 2010. We support the NCCW to establish a child rights database, monitoring system and to develop indicators to report on the fulfillment of child rights and advocate on the realization of children rights. We have also supported the Child Rights Institute (CRI) to establish a national child rights resource centre. We support the NCCW to continue advocating for including the child rights in the new constitution of Sudan as well as we train and equip stakeholders to budget for children.
BUILDING AWARENESS AND CAPACITY:
We support and work with our national partners to develop child-friendly materials and promote children’s rights through workshops, boys and girls groups’ activities, meetings, celebration of children regional and international days. We also promote child participation through training of children, sensitization of SC staff, government staff and civil society partners. We organize workshops for media on child rights to play a vital role in advocating for children rights. To create a favorable and conducive environment among the civil society organization that are working on child rights issues, all the members of the Child Rights Forum (CRF) members are aware of the “arbitration” and they are using it to solve any disputes without referring it to the court. Also we support the voluntary audit initiative, supervised by the CRF, for organization capacity development purposes. Further to this and to contribute to the profiling of children’s rights in Sudan, and on annual basis, we support the Child Rights award that is awarded to activist on child rights.
OUR IMPACT
Along with the civil society organizations and other stakeholders, we played a key role in promoting and profiling children's rights in Sudan. The greatest achievement in the past ten years in Sudan is remarked by the enactment of the 2010 Child Act following Save the Children’s advocacy efforts along with its partners which ultimately resulted in establishing the Family and Child Protection Units. The ACRWC has also been ratified by the government in 2008 as a result of continuous lobbying and advocacy. We also led efforts to the passing of the National Anti-Corporal Punishment legislation that took effect in Khartoum and Red Sea states.
In 2013, the CRG sector directly reached 93,322 people, of which 78,088 are children, and reached approximately 4,972,272 people indirectly of which 4,896,348 are children.
