April 2, 2024
PEP supported UNICEF to revise guidance document on developing and conducting situation analyses of child rights.
The importance of local leadership is highlighted as PEP supported UNICEF to revise their “Guidance to Develop the Situation Analysis”, a document to facilitate high-quality analyses of child rights.
The Guidance document supports UNICEF Country Offices to develop and conduct high-quality situation analyses that can inform transformational and lasting change for children, adolescents and their families and communities.
PEP assisted UNICEF for the 2024 Guidance revision—now completed—to align with the major shifts in UNICEF’s approach to country programme planning, particularly towards sustainable, long-term changes.
Engaging local researchers, institutions and stakeholders to help develop and implement the analytical methodology is a key update to the Guidance. Local knowledge and expertise are essential for informing decisions on the most relevant data, indicators and approaches and to provide the in-country context. These choices directly affect the results and conclusions of the analysis, and thus its impact and sustainability thereof.
Situation Analyses are vital to UNICEF’s work supporting the rights of children. UNICEF workers throughout the world use these analyses to identify gaps in evidence and data on children and adolescents and support stronger evidence bases and data landscapes for assessing child rights and well-being. Over time, a Situation Analysis can provide a holistic picture of a country’s progress (lack thereof, or regression) in terms of child rights against the backdrop of national, regional and global development. The Situation Analysis is an important instrument to promote actions and policies that will further the progress on child rights-related national goals.
In parallel, PEP developed a note on the importance of local leadership in conducting situational analyses and other such studies, which will be disseminated to UNICEF country offices.
PEP’s contributions were led by Lucia Ferrone (University of Florence, Italy), in collaboration with Edgar Cooke (Ashesi University, Ghana), and with advice from PEP’s Scientific Advisor, John Cockburn. For this project, PEP worked with UNICEF’s Division of Data, Analytics, Planning and Monitoring (DAPM).
