Child Rights in Economic Crisis: Strategies for Protection & Recovery

2. Next steps • Website – papers, emails, presentations • Conference report • Working papers and publication • Finalisation of ODI/UNICEF overview and regional reports • Development Policy Review Special Issue • Advocacy – materials, partnerships, events • Future conferences?

3. Some themes • The economic slowdown is having heterogeneous but real impacts on children. • The food and fuel price increases remain a major factor – and could be more significant in the long run. • Children are at great risk, with some groups particularly vulnerable – a short crisis can have lifetime implications. • Social protection and services have eased impacts where they have been in place. SP must become established – but there are institutional (and definitional) challenges. Basic social services should remain, at least, on their pre crisis path. • Fiscal difficulties may be coming – but cuts in social provision must be avoided. – we should ask for what is needed. • Looking toward the MDG review – the crisis underlines the need to include vulnerability. • Empirical work crucial on the impacts of crises children and other vulnerable groups is shockingly unavailable – UNICEF could have a key role here.

4. Financial Crisis - General General regional and international macro-economic health General regional and international macro-economic health Dimensions of the macro-economic environment Remittances Financial flows Trade and prices (commodities and services) Aid Exchange Rates Fiscal space Declining investment in public services (education, health, nutrition, water and sanitation, housing, protection, care) Rising unemployment, under-employment, declining working conditions Meso-level effects of the financial crisis Reduced access to credit Declining social capital; rising social violence Civil society policy advocacy + service provision • Policy responses • (Fiscal stimulus, trade policy, monetary policy, aid policy • pre-existing and crisis-response investment in basic services, • pre-existing social protection infrastructure and crisis-specific measures, • labour policy) Political economy dynamics Policy responses Household consumption (food and services, both quantity and quality) Protection (physical and emotional) & promotion of well-being Household management of assets and investments Household labour allocation Reproduction, nurture, and care Contribution to community life Functions of the household Intra-household dynamics & household composition Child-specific vulnerabilities Deprivations of rights to survival, development, protection, participation

5. StrategyContinue Raising the game re children: Economic crisis, poverty, MDGs, Aid, social protectionWorking with differencesLeveraging donors/ governments/ MoF

6. ResearchData, Data, Data

7. Policymacro-economic policies; Social protection/ Social services; labour and consumption; credit; social capital.......

8. ActionAid (outsourcing child rights expertise; cross donor working group on child rights)Crisis research; PRSP - Child rights toolkitRecovery With a Human Face

9. Safeguarding and progressing children’s rights Turning Crisis into Opportunity for Children – the Human Face of the Future

10. Recovery with a Human FaceFive Actions at Country Level: • Analyzing budgets for social and economic recovery • Scaling up social protection • Maintaining (if not increasing) core social expenditures • Identifying sources of fiscal space • Providing options to assist the government in a country dialogue on crisis responses