Accountability for Protecting Children from Violence:

Recommendations for World Vision’s Action

Introduction

This paper provides a set of recommendations for World Vision to improve accountability for child protection. Recommendations are based on a review of recent literature and roughly 90 case studies of World Vision programming related to accountability and child protection.

Violence against children is a complex problem for which “improved accountability” is not always, or even typically, the solution.Rather, as broader literature and WV’s own theory of change suggest, many sources of violence against children are best addressed through programming, partnering, or other advocacy approaches. Thus, “accountability” interventions are only a small piece of a complex solution.

Nonetheless, for a certain subset of child protection strategies[1], accountability is a crucial element of success. This paper focuses on the ways that World Vision can help improve accountability and contribute to these two strategies.

Image from Citizen Voice and Action Most Significant Change Stories (Tororo and Nakasongola), World Vision Uganda 2014.

Recommendation #1: Position “Child Protection and Advocacy” groups as accountability advocates at the local level.

World Vision’s “Child Protection and Advocacy” model catalyses local, multi-stakeholder partnerships (“CPA groups”) in order to improve the protection of children. By supporting these groups, WV contributes to its Standard Intermediate Outcome Indicators related to Child Protection.[2] Given the importance of these local CP groups, their existence also contributes to the advancement of global SDGs.

In some cases, CPA groupshave already advocated for accountability for government and nongovernmental actors[3]. Looking ahead, World Vision can more intentionally position the CPA group to advance accountability for CP:

  1. Include “accountability” responsibilities in the TOR for the CPA group.
  2. Build CPA group capacity to implement accountability-focused interventions: Many CPA group members represent institutions that have their own child protection obligations, so it will be important for the CPA group to develop its own internal mechanisms for accountability, perhaps through peer review. For example, CVA “social audits” and “community score cards” might become a natural extension of regular CPA activity. The multi-stakeholder nature of the group can provide legitimacy and credibility to these processes.
  3. Equip CPA groups to systematically monitor the implementation of national legislation: Evidence from ADAPT analyses can play a key role in helping to identify accountability gaps in the child protection system, and mobilise CP formal and non-formal actors to address those gaps.

Recommendation #2: Facilitate the creation of local by-laws and regulations that help fulfil national legislation and international norms.

Accountability depends upon the existence of an obligation. Yet, for many critical aspects of a child protection system, the obliged party is unidentified, obligations are vague or abstract, and redress remains elusive. World Vision can help distil and clarify obligations by facilitating the creation of local laws and regulations that help protection materialize in the lives of children.

  1. Help traditional leaders create bylaws against harmful practices, child labour, and child trafficking. World Vision has demonstrated a relatively unique ability to work with traditional leaders and local authorities to abolish sensitive, harmful practices[4]. These local laws keep local governments accountable for the implementation of aspirational national legislation. Local laws can help assign enforcement duties, and establish (often monetary) penalties for the violation of the laws.Fines can benefit local government CP actors and create incentives for enforcement.
  2. Create a library of model legislation against harmful practices. Rather than start from scratch every time a community wants to legislate a bylaw against FGM, child marriage or child labour, CPA groups should draw from existing legislation that has been successfully applied in other communities within a broader context[5]. World Vision can help by creating a library of such bylaws. Creating such a library can also facilitate learning among communities, build solidarity, andhelp WV grow an evidence-base about legislation that works.Ultimately, these steps can help accelerate the abolition of harmful practices.
  3. Focus on the creation of “Citizen Charters” that help clarify local, measurable commitments to CP. Citizen Charters are public agreements between citizens and service delivery providers that clearly codify expectations and standards in the realm of service delivery[6]. These agreements precisely define the services that a community can expect to receive. In the context of ending violence against children, Citizen Charters can be extremely effective in helping communities tailor national level commitments to local context and budgetary reality[7]. They can also help ensure that communities have specific government commitments to CP that are easy to monitor, using CVA for example.These agreements are a good fit for World Vision because negotiation can be integrated into existing development processes within the Development Programme Approach and the “Critical Path”[8].

Recommendation #3: Equip CPA groups to design, test, document, and scale solutions that fulfil government commitments to CP.

In many contexts, governments have committed to the provision of key CP services, but have failed to deliver. The obstacles vary, but may derive from financial constraints, a lack of capacity, or political will. WV can help overcome these obstacles by partnering with government to test interventions, document their impact, and work with government allies to scale the best performing solutions[9]. After all, WV has the unique ability to test CP solutions in 1800 ADP “laboratories” around the world.

WV has demonstrated some success along these lines, in particular as part of the “TD Plus” approach. But scalable solutions have tended to emerge organically, rather than as part of a coordinated campaign. Other times, ADPs have sought government partnership only as a means to “sustainability” at the end of the project. In the future, by coordinating investments and pilots, WV can more intentionally target the most essential solutions for government adoption.

Recommendation #4: Integrate a “protection” focus into CVA interventions in order to ensure a safe school environment.

Common CP Standards that can be measured with a CVA “Monitoring Standards Session” in Schools
Administrative/Governance obligations that protect children from violence[10]:
  1. Rules against corporal punishment. Clear, enforced rules about the use of corporal punishment help ensure a safe learning environment.
  2. Student representative on school governance council. Representatives help serve as an early warning system for threats to children.
  3. Mandatory reporting rules for teachers and administrators. Properly trained teachers often help report signs of abuse.
  4. Rules for reporting bullying. Clear, enforced rules about bullying can help ensure children know how to prevent peer violence.
Structural requirements that protect children from violence[11]:
  1. Separate sanitary facilities. Clean, adequate, gender-separated toilets help decrease sexual abuse, especially of girls, when using the toilet. Teachers and students should also have separate facilities.
  2. School fence or boundary. Delineated school spaces help keep children in school and perpetrators out.
  3. Structural safety. School building should comply with key government requirements for school safety and disaster preparedness.
  4. Basic medical equipment. A first aid kid should be available, and staff should be trained to use it.
  5. Visibility of classroom. Classrooms with windows or glass help deter abuse by creating a transparent environment.
Common categories of protection criteria that can be measured with a CVA Score Card in Schools
  1. Overall satisfaction with safety of school
  2. Perception of school’s structural safety
  3. Perception of the amount of bullying at the school
  4. Perception of safety going to and from school
  5. Student confidence to report abuse or neglect
Teacher/administrator perception of the likelihood of violence in the home.

World Vision’s “Citizen Voice and Action” model is a core part of education programming in hundreds of schools around the world. By intentionally incorporating a “protection” element into existing CVA work in schools, World Vision can reduce physical, sexual and peer violence at one of its most common sites[12].

CVA includes two tools that practitioners have successfully used to help ensure accountability for child protection in schools[13]. The “Monitoring Standards” or “Social Audit” tool is one element of the CVA process that can be adapted in order to ensure that schools comply with existing government regulations designed to keep schools safe (see Annex 1).

The “Community Score Card” is another element of the CVA process that can help measure perceptions of protection, and generate discussion about how to eliminate risks. In this three step process, a school community is first divided into disaggregated focus groups that provide a safe space for discussion among relatively homogenous populations (e.g. female students, male teachers, administrators). Next, focus groups answer the question “What are the criteria that make a school safe?” ([JC1]See Annex 1). These criteria are then rated on a 5-point scale in each group. The results can help to generate a discussion about ways to improve school safety and hold stakeholders accountable for making improvements.

Recommendation #5: Equip CPA groups to use a “light” version of CVA tools in order to monitor protective services.

In the past, World Vision Child Protection staff reported that they have been discouraged by the weight of assimilating both the “CPA” and “CVA” models, which include hundreds of pages of text. This need not be the case. CPA groups should more freely select tools from the CVA approach that help them accomplish their goals. In particular, CPA groups should draw from “Phase Two” of the CVA model. Other CVA elements are ordinarily adequately covered in the CPA model.

Experience shows that CPA practitioners can benefit from using the CVA “Monitoring Standards” session to measure the performance of protective services[14]. By leveraging this tool, practitioners can contribute to WV’s proposed Standard Intermediate Outcome Indicators related to CP and governance as well.[15]These are the types of protective services standards that CVA practitioners have monitored in the past:

  1. Capacity of key child protection actors (training, funding, facilities)
  2. Catchment population per social worker
  3. Police procedures in cases of abuse or neglect
  4. Confidentiality procedures in cases of abuse or neglect

But a country’s commitment to protective services at the local level will largely depend on its overall development. More sophisticated programmes might draw from the164 possible indicators found in the MEER region’s “Child Protection Index”. Many of these are appropriate for local measurement.

CPA groups might also benefit from using the CVA “Community Score Card”. However, this tool typically seeks the opinions of service users. In the case of CP services, care should be taken to avoid compromising confidentiality or traumatizing victims[16].

Training of trainers sessions in Arusha Tanzania

Recommendation #6: Do not overestimate the value of CVA in ensuring accountability for child protection.

CVA played a key role in the CHN campaign and in World Vision’s contribution to accountability for MDGs 4 and 5. As World Vision considers a campaign on violence against children, CVA can play an important role, especially at schools. But practitioners should be aware of challenges in the application of CVA to CP that were not as common in the CHN campaign:

  1. Intangible service commitments: CVA thrives when tangible, well-defined services exist at a brick-and-mortar facility, like midwives and drugs at a clinic. CP services, in contrast, are not ordinarily intangible and not confined to a facility.
  2. Sensitivity, taboos and confidentiality: Health issues, in general, are less sensitive than child protection issues. While we all agree that malaria is bad, many people disagree about what types of violence against children are bad. Taboos and traditions can undermine candid, public deliberation about the best way to tackle violence against children in ways that are distinct from discussions about health.
  3. Lack of popular mobilization: Health services are popular: every human has a personal interest in ensuring that health services function efficiently. But many child protection services are important only to a small, vulnerable, and/or powerless subset of the population[17]. Accordingly, popular mobilization to ensure accountability for CP services will be more challenging than popular mobilization for health services. World Vision and its local partners might need to play a more active advocacy role in order to ensure CP issues receive due attention. The CPA group can play an important role in helping to organize this popular pressure.
  4. Diversity of actors: In the CHN campaign, CVA practitioners were able to focus their advocacy on the Ministry of Health and its local counterparts. In order to ensure accountability for a holistic CP system, advocates will need to target a variety of institutions, including ministries of education, social welfare and health. Building these relationships will be more costly in terms of time, resources and political capital.
  5. Vertical integration: Linking local advocacy to policy influence was challenging for the CHN campaign, and will likely be even more challenging for CP. For CHN, it was relatively simple to develop consensus around a few “must haves” at clinics across the developing world, but CP services are much more context-specific. As a result, it will be more challenging to aggregate data and align actors for policy influence.

World Vision can address these challenges to some degree by incorporating the following recommendations in conjunction with traditional CVA and CPA work.

Recommendation #8: Deploy “Citizen Report Cards” in order to give more anonymity to community members who speak about child protection issues.

Citizen Report Cards are quantitative and perception-based surveys of anonymous individuals within a service’s target group[18]. In the context of ending violence against children, surveys might measure children’s satisfaction with laws to end corporal punishment in schools or their perceptions of safety in urban areas. This data could contribute to WV’s reporting on its own global CP targets[19]. For World Vision, these surveys could be integrated into ongoing sponsorship monitoring and ultimately feed accountability campaigning at the local, regional or national level[20].

Recommendation #9: Harmonize Local and National Level ADAPTs and include a simple score for each ADAPT section.

The ADAPT tool has helped more than 36,000 participants in more than 40 countries analyse their child protection system. This analysis has often led to greater insight and improved, evidence based advocacy. World Vision can improve the ADAPT in two key ways:

  1. Ensure that the community-level ADAPT is harmonized with the national level ADAPT. The national level adapt is a generic assessment of a country’s child protection system, drawn largely from existing UNICEF and UN CRC materials. Local ADAPTS are similarly generic. In the future, local level ADAPT questions should more intentionally reflect the results of the national level ADAPT and ensure questions analyse the implementation of national legislation. These changes will help local level stakeholders hold government accountable by using national legislation as the referent.
  2. Include a numeric score for each ADAPT element at the local and national level. Longer, narrative answers to questions about the child protection system are useful for programming decisions. Advocacy requires brief snapshots of a problem in order to stimulate interest and debate. Current ADAPT materials should be reformed to include a simple scoring mechanism for each indicator. The ADAPT could borrow from UNICEF’s 4-point governance indicator framework[21] or from the internationally recognized “net promoter” scale[22].

Sample recommendations for reformed ADAPT questions
Current Indicator / Suggested Indicator
What services exist in the community (formal and informal) to protect and provide support to children who are at risk or have experienced abuse, neglect or exploitation? / Do services (formal and informal) to protect and provide support to children who are at risk or have experienced abuse, neglect or exploitation comply with requirements of national legislation?
Do service providers such as teachers, health workers, police, social workers or counsellors have the capacity to identify, report and respond in an appropriate, gender sensitive and timely manner to cases of abuse, violence and exploitation? / Do service providers such as teachers, health workers, police, social workers or counsellors have the capacity, including proper licensing and legally mandated qualifications, to identify, report and respond in an appropriate, gender sensitive and timely manner to cases of abuse, violence and exploitation?
Is there a mechanism that brings together the different stakeholders and duty bearers for preventing and responding to child abuse, neglect and exploitation? / Does the mechanism that brings together the different stakeholders and duty bearers for preventing and responding to child abuse, neglect and exploitation comply with the requirements of national legislation?

Recommendation #10: “Vertically integrate” accountability work at the local level in order to ensure sustainable, systemic change.

There is growing consensus among academics that accountability is more likely when advocates “vertically integrate”[23]. Given the complex political dynamics at stake in the context of ending violence against children, stakeholders will need to pay special attention to the ways that “vertical integration” can help actors overcome political obstacles:

  1. National Offices should ensure a nationally-coordinated strategy. An individual in the WV office should have the authority and responsibility to require that all WV ADPs contribute in at least a minimal way on a few, key strategic objectives, while leaving the majority of the campaign open to local contextualization.
  2. National Offices should develop partnerships with harder-edged advocacy groups. Literature suggests that accountability requires both constructive engagement and the threat of sanction or shame[24]. World Vision is obviously better at constructive engagement. Early on, National Offices should consider partnerships with human rights groups, legal groups and “edgier” advocacy groups that can apply adversarial pressure at key moments[25].
  3. National Offices should create multi-level partnerships to “squeeze” out accountability. Accountability tends to be more likely when civil society actors build an “accountability sandwich” in which pro-accountability actors at the local level align with pro-accountability actors at the district, provincial, or national level[26]. WV can help convene these actors and squeeze out the anti-accountability actors who obstruct reform.
  4. Ensure national campaigns include a robust, citizen-driven, monitoring component. Accountability often depends upon reliable data about the actual performance of government services. By equipping citizens to collect and own this data, WV can ensure that accountability campaigns retain an authentic, organic nature and avoid the appearance of foreign influence. Quantitative, headline-grabbing evidence from social audits, community score cards and citizen report cards can help ensure media and governmental attention at higher levels.
  5. Deploy multiple tactics. Several decades of social accountability practice tends to show that accountability is not the result of the application of some “tool”. Rather, practitioners should begin by identifying their goals and the strategy that is most likely to advance those goals. Tools and tactics should then be matched to the goal. In some cases, social accountability tools may play no role at all – just because WV is good at social accountability does not mean it will be the solution for CP challenges.