Colombia advances towards the implementation of a rights monitoring system

Colombia advances towards the implementation of a rights monitoring system

As a result of the technical assistance that the IIN has been providing to the State of Colombia, progress has been made regarding the design and implementation of a system which will make it possible to follow up and monitor levels of compliance with child rights.

 This system is based on a number of indicators which involve four groups of rights and make it possible to visualize levels of progress regarding the international commitments undertaken at the International Conference on Population and Development, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and most particularly, the comments made by the Committee on the Rights of the Child (UN) on occasion of the analysis of the country report submitted by the Colombian state.

More than ten Colombian state institutions participated in this process, assembled in a panel responsible for the Single System of Indicators (SUIN, in Spanish). As part of the final stage of the process, on 21 November 2011, an IIN team travelled to Bogota in order to interview representatives of the organizations in charge of generating information and processing it in accordance with the guidelines provided in each indicators reference sheet.

The following day, during a work meeting held with twenty technicians and directors representing nine of the institutions which were part of the SUIN panel, the conceptual framework for the system was validated, indicators for which there were still elements to be determined were reviewed and it was agreed, amongst other things, that the base year for the information to be handled would be 1990, in order to make visible the evolution achieved by Colombia from the moment when the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was signed.

In view of the progress made on this opportunity and the delivery of a paper produced by the IIN in early December, it is expected that the Colombian authorities will be able to publish a first report based on this system before the end of the year. Participants agreed that one of the strong points of the process was the fact that the system was produced by means of the permanent exchange of ideas between IIN technicians and the institutions of the State of Colombia responsible for its implementation and management.

The technical assistance provided by the IIN on this occasion is part of the project for the Promotion and Protection of Children Rights in the Inter-American System, which has the support of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).