Foresti, Marta, Helen Ba??os Smith and Harry Jones (ODI). 2009. "Towards a Suite of Tools for Ex Ante Child Rights Impact Assessment: Concept note for UNICEF".
- Objective: Sets out main issues to be considered when developing a Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) to help governments, donors and other stakeholders identify and address the potential impacts on children's rights of new laws, policies and programs.
- Key characteristics: Focus on children's rights, ex-ante analysis, focus on duty-bearer that is not just state but also at various levels in society - such as families, communities, civil society, local and national government, private sector.
- Brief Summary: Seeks to integrate or mainstream CRIA into existing Impact Assessments, rather than a stand-alone tool. Provides overview of ex-ante impact assessments and examines the politics in the policy processes and instituational dimensions. It also discusses experiences to date on human rights and child rights impact assessments (although there is little information on how they are carried out or the methodologies used).It then sets out the framework for an ex-ante child rights impact assessment, explaining why it is important and relevant. It then lays out the expectations of an eaCRIA (getting children onto the agenda and promoting and embedding their rights) and practical ways forward (using it as a standalone model, or a generic tool, or using it as an embedded model, or a tool designed to fit specific needs or cases). Annexes include types of ex-ante impact assessments; frameworks for human rights and child rights impact assessments; what needs to be in place to make eaCRIA usable, useful and used.
- Best used for: Analysis of likely policy impacts on child rights through ex-ante impact assessment. Contains useful annexes on different types of ex-ante impact assessments, frameworks for HR and CRIA, what needs to be in place for these impact assessments to be effective and used.
- Data needed: Toolset still needed to be created. But can start with proposed policies and programs.
- Tested?: Has been tested, but so far few CRIA carried out - and there is little literature on lessons-learned.
- Possible disadvantages: Quite resource-heavy, which may need to be further considered if it is to be systematically implemented; various challenges in this still-developing methodology not addressed e.g. how to interpret or define rights or how to address the potential impacts concretely?
- Going forward: Links between macroeconomic policies and poverty?; Further development of this tool, including a toolset.
- Complementary tools: This provides an ex-ante impact assessment tools (like Hunt), but could consider how fit together with post-facto HRIA tools.