Citizen vigilance on children's rightsThe Observatory for the Rights of Children and Adolescents was created in 2002 to demonstrate to national and local authorities, private sector and the media, the precarious situation of thousands of children and adolescents in Ecuador, and to stimulate the fulfillment of their rights . This Observatory acts within three dimensions: technical, communicative and policy-oriented. With the help of UNICEF it has created a children and adolescent rights index that measures fulfillment of the rights of children and adolescents in Ecuador. The index is a technical instrument that invites a vigilant public to observe, over time, the issues facing Ecuadorian children today. With the index, the public and authorities are permanently informed about the evolution of the situation of children and adolescents: if they are dying, going to school or not, or if they are malnourished. The index is expressed as a number out of ten; the ideal being ten. The index is also sensitive to the changing needs of children during the developmental process. It calculates three stages of life: from 0 to 5, which corresponds with the first years, from 6 to 11, which responds to school aged children, and from 12 to 17, the adolescent period. The group that forms the Observatory communicates to the public and authorities the results of studies, through two mediums: the bulletin “Observatory” which has published seven issues, and the extensive, yearly report, “The State of Rights”. The index is used by technical groups from various Ministries, by institutions that work with children and adolescents such as the National Board for Children, by local authorities and by media in the country. The index is an informative, planning and evaluation tool for children programs. The political dimension of the Observatory is in the Citizen Board, formed by 21 prominent citizens, whose legitimacy makes it possible for them to influence the design of child-oriented public policies. They come from various cities and regions and have diverse political and ideological positions, professions, institutional affiliations and ethno-cultural pertinence. They have one objective in common: to fight for the rights of children and adolescents.
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