Lebanon Child Rights Governance
Save the Children places a great importance on encouraging children and young people to speak up about their rights, delivering a message to those who have the power to change. We partner with civil society organisations to build the capacity of municipal councils and Palestinian Popular Committees to adopt child rights friendly practices and policies.
During the COVID-19 crisis, Save the Children carried out a survey to understand children and youth's views during the lockdown and take their recommendations and suggestions to decision makers. For more about the report, go to https://lebanon.savethechildren.net/resources.
Moreover, Save the Children cooperated with Manara, a network of 10 civil society organisations from a number of Arab countries aiming to amplify have children’s voices and make them heard on the national, regional and global level. Child-led data collection is conducted across the country to help better understand the needs and perspectives of children from a range of social, educational and economic issues.
The Main activities conducted under the CRG sector in Lebanon are:
§ Monitoring the Convention on the Rights of the Child: Save the Children supports CSO partners in Lebanon and in the MENA region to participate in child rights reporting processes through the international reporting mechanisms. Alternative reports are developed by national coalitions with the participation of children and submitted to the UNCRC Committee and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
§ Participatory Action Research and Child Led Data Collection: Children between the ages of 14 and 18 collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data on the situation of child rights in Lebanon and the MENA region, and use their findings to highlight child rights violations and to collect evidence to back up their advocacy actions.
§ Advocacy: In Lebanon, children advocate to have budget allocations for children and children councils. In the MENA region, they advocate for the enactment of child related laws and for ending violence against children at school and at home. During COVID-19, child led social media campaigning approaches will be developed to ensure children participation in voicing their opinion during this period.
§ Building coalitions to advocate for child rights implementation: SC supports building coalitions to advocate for the rights of the Palestinian refugee children to Education, Protection and Participation. SC will support capacity building of the CSO members and the development of an advocacy plan to be implemented with children and youth.
§ Child friendly benchmarks at the level of municipalities and Palestinian Popular Committees: SC, Nabaa and ALEF CSOs support municipalities and Palestinian Popular Committees on having child focused practices through training and monitoring their work according to a set of benchmarks developed in line with the municipal law.
§ Public Investment in children: SC, Nabaa and ALEF CSOs support training of municipalities on child focused budgeting, in order to raise awareness on child focused allocations and expenditures at the level of local duty bearers.
§ Building the capacity of civil society partners: Training and capacity building for partners are conducted regularly in order to ensure quality programming. Different approaches are used including Organizational Capacity Development (OCD) that includes a process of an internal assessment that is owned by the CSO and setting a plan with clear goals and milestones to be measured after implementation.
§ Building the capacity of children to become child rights advocates and agents of change: Our CSO partners train children on child rights, advocacy and life skills including communication and peacebuilding skills. Children committees are elected by children to represent them at the education centers, in order to voice their opinion about the issues they are facing and communicate their recommendations through center based child led initiatives with parents and teachers participation.
