Management of the Department
M&E officials in premiers offices and departments
Child rights focal points and M&E officials in National Departments
Community Development Workers in local government
Child Rights Focal Points and M&E officials in the District Municipalities and Metro’s
National Children’s Rights Civil Society Organisations and two Provincial NGO’s per Province
Partners,
Facilitators
Ladies and Gentlemen
I am honoured and delighted to be part of this gathering. As I welcome you to Tshwane, I do so confident that this meeting will one day be remembered as a decisive moment in our collective drive to accelerate the realisation of the rights and empowerment of children.
We are meeting here today as part of this process and to provide all of us with a platform to share ideas on strengthening our individual and collective capacity to carry out our responsibilities. Indeed, we have gathered here to give concrete expression to our theme: Working together we can do more!
Our meeting today reaffirms our common understanding that the challenges that confront all our people, our children, are of such a nature that no single individual or organisation can claim to have the capacity to address them on their own. Indeed, our experience tells us that when shared, the burden is lighter.
We embrace the notion of working together precisely because we acknowledge that none of us can monopolise wisdom on how to address the plight that confront South Africa’s most vulnerable people, in this case, children. We must continue to work together as partners and ensure optimal utilisation of our collective wisdom, expertise and resources as we strive to ensure a better life for children. Working together, we can and must ensure that issues of children remain firmly on our national agenda.
The set objective of this national consultation with the child rights sector is to consult on key strategic plans and implementation frameworks relating to the sector and to reach agreement on the purpose of this meeting is to present and consult on the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities (DWCPD’s) key children’s rights documents and processes which includes:
- The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), African Union Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child reports, Optional Protocols and associated processes
- The National Plan of Action for Children
- Proposed institutional mechanisms for the sector
- Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have come a long way since the establishment of the National Children Machinery, since the establishment of offices on the rights of children in the Presidency and Premier’s offices in Provinces. Five years later, having accumulated so much experience, we must pose this fundamental question to ourselves: What are the things that we must do to strengthen the National Children Machinery so that it can respond better and more effectively to our collective mandate?
I am confident that this gathering will, over these three days, answer this question with the eloquence and clarity necessary to take our work to greater heights. As we assess the current institutional arrangements and the quality of work done, another important question arises: Are the current configurations and institutional arrangements adequate to meet the critical challenges we are grappling with?
Children remain highly vulnerable to social inequity, underdevelopment, unemployment and poverty. The psychological and physical well-being of children is always dependent on the socio-economic conditions of their parents and families, the quality of nurturing and protective care they receive; and their access to resources and opportunities for their optimum growth and development.
These child rights delivery challenges cut across a range of National, provincial and municipalities. The whole government machinery is established to deliver services to children. All of us in one way or the other are delivering a service to children.
Are budget allocations at national, provincial and municipal level affecting the capacity of lower tiers to provide the necessary services?
The reality is that budgets are currently allocated to deliver services to children and maybe the critical question is : Are the services delivered addressing the plight and needs of children in our society? If we are, why are we were we are?
As we assess the strengths and weaknesses of the National Children’s Machinery, we must never lose sight of our original strategic objectives which amongst many is to facilitate the domestication of the Convention on the Rights of Children, the Millennium Development Goals and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) and the National Plan of Action on Children as well as to provide a platform for multi-stakeholder engagement across disciplines and sectors on the national Children’s agenda.
A child-specific monitoring system should therefore make explicit links between law and policy, the rights to which children are entitled, the services to which they are entitled, and finally, to their status or well-being.
It is also now generally accepted that childhood experiences impacts profoundly on the life chances of adulthood, and therefore enhancing the quality and opportunities of children’s lives is intrinsically connected with a broader process of developing our economy and society at large.
In short, investing in children is not only the right thing to do for their survival and quality of life but is also vital for creating and sustaining broad-based economic growth and future leadership of responsible adults.
The mandate of the DWCPD is to drive government’s equity, equality and empowerment agenda pertaining to Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities. As part of this agenda, the department promote facilitate, coordinate and monitor the mainstreaming of the rights and wellbeing of Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities into government’s policies, programmes and governance processes.
Our mandate pertaining to children is informed by the Constitution of South Africa, international human rights treaties that the country has signed (UNCRC & ACRWC) and the range of national legislation and policies.
This year is an important year for children and the children’s rights sector. We are preparing our Fourth Periodic Report and two other Optional Protocols to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. Consultations have been completed on the Discussion Document and we’ll share with the sector information in this regard.
The Following should be noted as work in progress by the machinery:
The UNCRC in its section on General Measures requires all countries who signed the UNCRC to develop and set in place mechanisms to periodically review a National Plan of Action for Children. The NPAC is not a separate plan for children: It is an integration of all the policies and plans developed by government departments and non-governmental organisations to promote the well-being of children.
Currently, there are also consultations happening on the draft NPAC document in all provinces together with the UNCRC discussion document. These will be shared and consulted further with the sector in order to finalise it before presenting the final draft to the Director-General (DG) Clusters and to Cabinet for approval.
A primary pillar of the mandate of the DWCPD is the development and implementation of an effective M&E strategy that is aligned with the NPAC. The development and implementation of an effective and efficient M&E strategy including a set of national key indicators, data sources and monitoring mechanisms constitutes the basis of this crucial mandate. It is also pertinently evident that this mandate is a shared one, including a broad range of government and civil society partners. This concept paper provides an overview of the envisaged process.
The DWCPD has developed a draft Child Rights M&E Strategic Framework. This forum should provide inputs on the framework including the proposed national key indicators for monitoring children’s rights and wellbeing.
The establishment of the DWCPD not only provides a more distinct location for the promotion of children’s rights in general, it also provides the opportunity to coordinate, strengthen and formalise the institutional arrangements to delivery on the realisation of children’s rights. This consultation will deliberate this part of our mandate and make concrete recommendations towards this end.
During this three-day interaction, we must strive to ensure that there is a common understanding of the role and mandate of the department. This workshop must also be able to clarify the role of this department and clarify how it collaborates with other government departments in fulfilment of our collective mandate.
As we fulfil our mandate, we must remind ourselves that our collective mission as a nation is to create a non-sexist, discrimination-free, equitable and inclusive society that protects and develops the human potential of its children, a society for all where children enjoy the same rights as their fellow citizens, and where all citizens and institutions share equal responsibility of creating such a society.
I look forward to fruitful deliberations.
Working together, we can do more to promote and protect the rights of children.
I thank you.
