Children
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Children

After nearly 28 years, The Communication Initiative (The CI) Global is entering a new chapter. 

Following a period of transition, the global website has been transferred to the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa, where it will be administered by the Social and Behaviour Change Communication Division. Wits' commitment to social change and justice makes it a trusted steward for The CI's legacy and future. 

On the transfer, co-founder Victoria Martin expressed her pleasure to see this work continue under Wits' leadership, knowing that co-founder Warren Feek (1953–2024) would have felt deep pride in The CI Global's Africa-led direction. 

As Wits, we honour the team and partners who sustained The CI for decades and look forward building from that strong base. This includes co-founders Warren Feek (1953-2024) and Victoria Martin as well as La Iniciativa de Comunicación (CILA), which continues independently at lainiciativadecomunicacion.com with links to The CI Global site. We are also eager to forge new partnerships and entertain new ideas as we consider how best to contribute to social and behaviour change in our rapidly evolving environment.

If you are joining the International Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) Summit in Panama, please join Wits and CILA on Monday, 22 June, to share your thoughts and suggestion for the relaunch of the Communication Initiative. We will be in Pacifica 5 from 12-1:25 for the Refuel, Reflect, and Renew Lunch Series: The Communication Initiative: celebrating a driving force for Communication for Social Change and the way forward. We will reflect on the legacy of Warren Feek and family in creating the Communication Initiative, consider the contributions of CI over the years and then turn our attention towards the future in this dynamic session. 

If you are unable to join us in Panama, we still want to hear from you. Please contribute your thoughts by following this link: https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026 or reaching out to ci_surveys@commint.com. 

You can also follow the QR Code:

 https://redcap.link/CommunicationInitiative2026

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Commitment to Children Audit (CCA)

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The Global Movement for Children (GMC) is leading a project to develop an outreach and advocacy tool to measure the level of commitment governments around the world have vis-à-vis children and rate them in a world ranking. This project, the Commitment to Children Audit (CCA), has the following goals:

  • Generate public support;
  • Draw the attention of policymakers and leaders to child rights issues;
  • Strengthen leaders' commitment to child rights.
Communication Strategies

As part of this initiative, CCA has introduced an inclusive and participatory approach to developing a tool to monitor accountability on children's rights and generate public debate on the issue. The participation of child rights organisations at all levels is understood as key to making this proposed tool truly effective in holding governments to account and having a real impact. For this reason, the first draft of the project is undergoing a broad consultation process within the Movement for all constituents to contribute their feedback, amendments, and improvements. Consultation was announced to be open to national child rights organisations online until September 15 2011.

 

As part of this tool, countries are examined based on their economic resources and compared with others (economic and geographic neighbours) instead of tracking only progress over time. It is proposed that the CCA focus on:

 

  • Equity: moves away from monitoring averages, instead penalising countries with big disparities.
  • Commitment in relation to the level of economic resources.
  • A dual analysis comprising an International Audit and a National Audit.
  • Outreach: The CCA will focus on reaching out to the general public, policymakers, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and leaders.

This is an advocacy effort. The first round of CCA is planned to take off in 2012 to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children (UNGASS). Initially, the project will be piloted in a few countries to then be gradually implemented in over 90 countries in the next few years. The CCA will be run globally every two years and will measure the commitment of governments' based on one major indicator per area of analysis: survival, growth, education, protection, participation, subjective well-being, and material well-being. Countries will be split into the two low-and-middle income and high-income groups and will be assessed accordingly.

Development Issues

Children, Rights.

Key Points

As the tenth anniversary of the UNGASS approaches, the GMC looks back upon the decade since the World Fit for Children Agenda was agreed in New York in 2002 and calls for a joint assessment of the achievements made and hold governments to account on the promise of a better world to children and a reminder of the efforts needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

 

For further information on the CCA, you may:

 

  1. Watch the PowerPoint presentation on the CCA.
  2. Join the CCA Group on Facebook (you must be a member of Facebook).
  3. Subscribe to the GMC's monthly newsletter.
  4. Email the GMC Secretariat: communications@gmfc.org
Partners

GMC is led by a coalition of organisations and networks focused on children composed at a global level by ENDA Tiers Monde, Plan International, REDLAMYC, Save the Children, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and World Vision, which together make up the Convening Committee. At a regional level, the GMC is led by the Regional Platforms which are in turn integrated by national platforms of organisations working with child rights.

Sources

Emails from Noemí Torrelles to The Communication Initiative on August 4 2011 and September 1 2011.