Are we kidding ourselves with global treaties?

Readers of this blog and my other blog know that I think child and civil registration rates are a great governance indicator. They capture the degree to which governments count citizens. As some have said, citizens don't count until they are counted. This is also an indicator that captures one of the biggest governance gaps in the world. In September 1990 the United Nations introduced the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a solution to the fact that many governments were not exercising their authority to effectively protect and advance the interests of children (what I would call a governance failure). 96% of the world's countries have signed off on this treaty, as shown in this map (green shows parties to the convention). View this photo
The treaty includes the following article (7): "the child shall be registered immediately after birth and has the right to a name and nationality and to know and be cared for by his or her parents. The State shall ensure the implementation of these rights in accordance with national law and its obligations under the relevant international instruments in this field, in particular where the child would otherwise be stateless." The interesting thing is that twenty years after the convention was signed many of the green countries on the map above are in the red when it comes to ACTUALLY REGISTERING KIDS. The governments are not exercising authority as they promised. The result: consider the data from a prior blog, showing the number of children under 14 who are not registered. (Based on population data in the World Development Indicators).http://matthewandrews.typepad.com/mattandrews/2012/10/b.html A country like Nigeria ratified the convention in 1991 but had over 40 million unregistered kids under 14 twenty years later. Similar for Pakistan and a range of others. The amazing thing is that these major gaps in the commitment exist AFTER a decade of MDG goals activity which included interventions focused on kids (education and health). Aren't we kidding ourselves when we accept a storyline about countries promising to register kids in 1990 and then not registering kids, but pretending to know how much education and health care is needed for kids and then (some of these countries) claiming success in providing that education and health care? If we want to have governance goals in post 2015 indicators we need to ensure that child and civil registration is one of these. And we should also make sure we close gaps between treaties that countries SAY they are party to but then do not ACTUALLY IMPLEMENT.

Comments

[Natalia Adler]

Hi Matt,

Great to see your very first post in 2014 focusing on issues related to child rights! ;-)

While I agree with all the points raised, I wonder if it's time to move beyond governments when talking about governance goals/outcomes... Take birth registration as an example. In many countries, this used to be done by churches as pre-requisites for baptism (I believe this is still the case in some countries). The motivation for parents to register their children was very compelling. In Nicaragua, we're trying to experiment with "delegation" of birth registration services to different actors (including religious leaders and midwives), particularly in remote communities.

This also helps with a challenge in implementation: the difference between service availability and use. Many governments rely on making birth registration services available and their responsibility often stops there. It's like providing a fountain and waiting until people are thirsty to drink the water.

I think there's a lot to learn from different stakeholders in creating incentives and making public services attractive to people by amplifying the authorizing environment to achieve societal goals and co-sharing responsibilities. The private sector has long thrived on this concept. I think we can gain a lot from using human centered design techniques to ensure actual implementation in a broader framework of actors.