STRENGTHENING CHILD RIGHTS GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS IN EASTERN AFRICA

Strengthening Child Rights Governance Systems in Eastern Africa is a five-year project that seeks to build on the various gains that have been achieved under the last three sub-awards with Save the Children (2014 – 2016) which are mainly focused on strengthening the functionality of the EACRN.

The project feeds into three sub-themes on Child Rights Governance prioritized by Save the Children in 2017 – 2021 period namely; Children Monitoring and demanding child rights with children (strengthening the demand side of accountability for child rights), Good governance delivering child rights (strengthening the supply side of accountability for children’s rights) and Public investment in children. The project is also aligned with the core mandate of EACHRights, which is to undertake programmes to promote, protect and enhance the realization of economic and social rights among marginalized and vulnerable groups.

Goal:

“To contribute to the enhanced effectiveness of the Eastern Africa Child Rights Network (EACRN) in conducting child rights advocacy, monitoring and coordinating with other child rights actors in the East African region by 2021 through capacity building, activity support and enhanced coordination structures.”

Objectives:

• To enhance the EACRN’s ability to undertake effective child rights advocacy and monitoring; by targeting EACRN member coalitions with various activities to increase their engagement with the regional and international child rights treaty monitoring bodies.
• To promote civil society coordination and collaboration in Eastern Africa through a functional EACRN – the secretariat will institutionalize information sharing among the member national coalitions through a structured and effective communication platform.
• To enhance joint advocacy on child rights advocacy by Eastern Africa CSOs with other regional child rights networks and actors-The EACRN will work together with CRNSA (the Child Rights Network of Southern Africa) as well as WACSOF (West African Civil Society Forum) within the framework of the Africa CSO forum, a grouping of regional child rights networks, to advance advocacy on child rights on the continental level, and also develop joint advocacy initiatives.
• To improve the coordination effectiveness of the EACRN secretariat. The various aspects of organizational capacity development (OCD) which were identified in various assessments by Save the Children will be instituted.

Key result areas:

• • The EACRN’s ability to undertake effective child rights advocacy and monitoring in the region enhanced through strengthening of the ability of national coalitions to effectively advocate for and monitor the implementation of child rights in their countries.

• • The capacity of EACRN member coalitions will be enhanced through targeted capacity building on various thematic issues and a follow up mechanism formulated to ensure knowledge transfer is achieved.
  • Enhanced collaboration and cooperation between EACRN and other regional child rights actors such as CRNSA, WASCOF and other CSO networks through information sharing, joint advocacy and shared learning.

• • The EACRN secretariat will be strengthened through the capacity building of staff to enable them improve coordination within the network. HR support to the network secretariat will also avail sufficient human resources to better coordinate the network.

More updates about CSO Effectiveness Programme are here.