The advocacy document is intended to serve as a resource:
- for the United Nations Special Representative on Violence against Children (SRSG-VAC) and other development partners with the objective of raising awareness among Governments regarding the importance of preserving and enhancing budgets for social services for children; and
- for partners in advocating for a progressive increase of public expenditure to take services and programs to scale and ensure national coverage for all children in need of social services that prevent and respond to violence against children in the Decade of Action in order to achieve SDGs 16, 4, 5 and 8.
The intended users of the advocacy document include:
- SRSG-VAC, UNICEF, World Vision, Save the Children, Plan International, ChildFund Alliance, and other partners; and
- goverment line ministries with child protection responsibilities, as well as non-government services providers and civil society.
To produce the advocacy document, Cornerstone reviewed and brought together the most relevant data and information about the following:
- Existing global, regional or national prevalence data, cost of inaction and investment cases in social services that respond and prevent violence against children
- Data on returns on investment from integrated prevention and response services to violence against children
- Information on levels of national budget allocations and expenditure (where available, all country examples) and the impact, if any of COVID-19, as well as early indications of post- pandemic recovery planning to “build back better”
- Eight to 10 country case studies documenting increases in national allocations and expenditure and lessons learnt from these experiences (the case studies should represent all regions and include 1-2 high income countries)
- Set of recommendations addressed to Governments, development partners, civil society and the private sector (3-5 points for each group).