'Budget for Children Analysis' Toolkit

Exciting work is going on in relation to budgeting on children's issues.
I will list here some documents that look at ways of involving children in developing and monitoring budgets related to children's issues.
The 'Budget for Children Analysis' Toolkit is a joint effort by HAQ: Centre For Child Rights and Save the Children, which provides steps for analyzing State Budget allocations and monitoring government commitments to Child Rights. The toolkit has been designed to demystify and elucidate in easy-to- understand language the concept of ' Budgeting for Children'. It aims to strengthen the capacities of civil society organisations in undertaking Child Centred State Budget Analysis, as an effective way to advocate for appropriate budget allocations for children issues and good governance, and to hold governments accountable for fulfilling children's rights.

Resource centre on children's rights

Save the Children Sweden is hosting a resource centre for Save the Children International on children's rights, with a specific focus on child rights governance and child protection. Currently it holds approximately 2,500 titles that can be downloaded for free. You can also sign in and create your own library with documents of the resource centre that you would like to have on hand at any time. You can share your library or ‘book shelf’ with others, by inviting them to join. You can thus share relevant literature with colleagues or participants in a training or workshop.
Each document in the resource centre has a brief description. One can also upload documents to the resource centre, once registered. The documents will be reviewed before they are accepted and shown on the website.

The African Report on Child Wellbeing 2011. Budgeting for Children

This 2011 edition of The African Report on Child Wellbeing is the second in a series of reports published biennially by The African Child Policy Forum as a contribution to putting Africa’s children on the public and political agenda, and to holding African governments accountable to their obligations – to their children. The report reviews the budget performance of 52 African governments between 2006-2008, focusing on spending in sectors that most directly impact on children. Along with Tanzania, Mozambique and Niger, the three African countries most committed to budgeting for children, the report also names Gabon, Senegal, Tunisia, Seychelles, Algeria, Cape Verde and South Africa as the best performing countries in allocating the maximum of their available resources to children. The report aims to put Africa’s children on the public and political agenda, and to hold African governments accountable for fulfilling their responsibilities towards their children. It explores in greater depth the obligations of African countries to invest in their children, the arguments for doing so – from a moral, social, political, and economic perspective – and the importance of the national budget (as a key policy document of the government) in: (1) positively impacting upon the wellbeing and quality of life of children, through budget allocations to sectors that most impact upon children’s lives; and (2) representing an effective barometer of true government commitment to the rights of the child.

Children demand respect for their rights as workers

In Bolivia, where there are an estimated 850,000 working children, members of the country’s largest union of child workers, UNATSBO, have sent a proposal to the government in which they call for their rights as workers to be recognised. Several of the children’s demands include legislative amendments to recognise that work for children begins at age six, not at age 14, as the law currently provides; protection against exploitative or hazardous work, or work that hinders a child’s health and physical, mental and social development; and that their salaries be brought in-line with the national minimum wage. Bolivians approved a new constitution last year, and legislators are currently in the process of rewriting existing laws to conform to the new legal code. The children's unions are pushing lawmakers to reform the Code of Children and Adolescents, which governs child labor.They want to ensure that children earn the same wages and have the same financial tools as their adult counterparts. In some sectors, they earn less than half the salary of their adult colleagues. Moreover, children don't have access to savings accounts and often give their earnings directly to their parents. Union members also lobby for safe work environments and for better medical care, especially for children whose jobs present a health risk.
The lack of recognition of children who work forms one of the major obstacles in achieving better living conditions for working children.

Read more:
Child workers of Bolivia Unite!
Niños y adolescentes trabajadores exigen garantías
"Mi fortaleza es mi trabajo" by UNATSBO (the publication is in Spanish only)

The Right Stuff magazine

The Right Stuff magazine was designed and written by more than 30 under 18 year-olds from across England, with the aim of promoting young people’s interest in children’s human rights and encouraging them to take action to achieve change for children. Articles cover a range of topics including the experiences of children in care; how children seeking asylum in the UK are treated; student protests; human rights fashion; protest music; and discrimination based on hair colour

Children's rights to nationality

A child's right to acquire a nationality is evident in the Convention on the Rights of the Child—the main United Nations treaty governing states' human rights obligations towards children. But the way states are supposed to interpret and implement that right is unclear.

In this document, the Open Society Justice Initiative urges the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child—the body that interprets the Convention—to issue a General Comment. The comment would clarify and emphasize the obligation that governments bear for stateless children and would raise the profile of the issue in high-level discussion.

See also:
Children and statelessness - questions and answers

CRIN's Editorial on children's statelessness

The child as citizen

The American Academy of Political and Social Science has decided to open online during January free access to its January 2011 issue of The ANNALS, "The Child as Citizen." This covers the 20th Anniversary of the CRC. The volume, edited by Felton Earls, will be open for free downloads through the end of January, meaning that individuals and institutions do NOT need to have a subscription to the journal to access and download the full-text articles.

Table of Content of the January 2011 Issue:
o Felton Earls - Children: From Rights to Citizenship
o Paula S. Fass - A Historical Context for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
o Geraldine Van Bueren - Multigenerational Citizenship: The Importance of Recognizing Children as National and International Citizens
o Marta Maurás - Public Policies and Child Rights: Entering the Third Decade of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
o Irene Rizzini - The Promise of Citizenship for Brazilian Children: What Has Changed?
o Elizabeth Bartholet - Ratification by the United States of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: Pros and Cons from a Child’s Rights Perspective
o Donald J. Hernandez, Nancy A. Denton, and Victoria L. Blanchard - Children in the United States of America: A Statistical Portrait by Race-Ethnicity, Immigrant Origins, and Language
o James Bohman - Children and the Rights of Citizens: Nondomination and Intergenerational Justice
o Andrew Rehfeld - The Child as Democratic Citizen
o Allison James - To Be (Come) or Not to Be (Come): Understanding Children’s Citizenship
o Judith Torney-Purta and Jo-Ann Amadeo - Participatory Niches for Emergent Citizenship in Early Adolescence: An International Perspective
o Daniel Hart and Robert Atkins - American Sixteen- and Seventeen-Year-Olds Are Ready to Vote
o Mary Carlson and Felton Earls - Adolescents as Deliberative Citizens: Building Health Competence in Local Communities
o Clotilde Fonseca and Maria Eugenia Bujanda - Promoting Children’s Capacities for Active and Deliberative Citizenship with Digital Technologies: The CADE Project in Costa Rica