RIATT-ESA and all its members welcome the Global Alliance because it is widely recognized that the global HIV response is failing to meet the needs of children
Beyond the ratifications of international and regional child rights instruments, as well as promulgation of impeccable laws, realization of children’s rights will not be actualized until adequate public resources are availed.
Reflecting on child and youth participation
RIATT-ESA commissioned a review of methodologies that involved child and youth participation in the eastern and southern Africa region in the context of HIV and AIDS. The review focused particularly on children’s involvement in relevant decision-making processes at policy and programming levels; in research, including monitoring and evaluation; and in conferences.
A number of descriptive reviews of child participation have already been undertaken in recent years. In order to build on these reviews, the RIATT-ESA review decided to take an analytical approach. Therefore, the review is not a 'how to do' nor a description of what is being done in the region, but rather an attempt to highlight important issues that need to be thought about when considering how to encourage greater child and youth participation in policy making initiatives and in our programming.
The intention of the review was to delve beneath the surface of the rhetoric around child and youth participation, and ask some tough questions about what we as development professionals - in our various roles - understand about this topic, and how we perceive our own involvement. Whilst the full review is available from the RIATT-ESA secretariat, this publication is a summary of the key issues. RIATT-ESA’s ongoing collaboration, through its child rights and participation working group, with the SADC secretariat was the initial motivation for the review, and it is hoped that it will also be used to get organisations talking about how children participate in their programmes. It can also be used for advocacy purposes to raise key issues with donors, programmers and policy makers.
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Child and youth participation in East and Southern Africa.pdf
An analytical review of the literature and five case studies on child and youth participation in East and Southern Africa.
In response to the lack of evidence on whether and how child participation can lead to the empowerment of children at an individual, family, community and policy level in the context of HIV and AIDS RIATT commissioned this review. The objectives of the review were:
In deciding where to focus this review the decision was made to build on the number of existing reviews of child participation (see Appendices at end of Section One) by taking a more analytical rather than a descriptive approach.
This document is intended as a technical resource for organisations aiming to advance child and youth participation as part of a broader response to HIV and AIDS within southern and eastern Africa. The hope is that policy makers and programme managers will through reading this overview of the state of play, the outline of issues and some description of methods be helped to reflect on what the operational implications are for promoting child participation in their area of operation.
Section One of the publication is an analysis of the state of play of child participation in the region based on an extensive review of literature and on 18 interviews (see end of Section One) with representatives of children's organisations working in the region.
Section Two is a collection of five case studies that focus on different ways that children are participating in the region. The case studies examine the extent to which these projects benefit and empower children, their families, communities and how they have influenced policy
