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Overview: Social policy and advocacy

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Web-based portal on child rights and equity launched in South Africa

© UNICEF South Africa/2012/ahmadzadeh

UNICEF Representative Aida Girma at the launch of PAN: Children.

PAN: Children aims to create a link between evidence, policy and practice

Pretoria, 3 September 2012 – A new policy-oriented knowledge hub on child rights and equity, known as Policy Action Network, or PAN: Children, was made public last week. The web-based portal is a partnership between UNICEF and South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council’s (HSRC).

The portal is targeted at South African policy makers and practitioners involved in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes relating to children, as well as academics and other research institutions working on issues related to child rights and their well-being. 

It also aims to reach out to other countries to promote mutual learning about innovative and evidence-based approaches towards equity-focused policy development and scale-up of services for children within the South-South Cooperation framework. 

PAN: Children provides the most comprehensive, up-to-date digital repository of resources on children in South Africa, including an up-to-date collection of publications, case studies, case laws, country studies and news.

“PAN: Children has all the right ingredients to become a key resource on child rights and evidence-based policy in the country; it will work as a model that will inspire many countries, not just in Africa, but around the world,” said UNICEF Representative Aida Girma.

South Africa is one of the world’s most unequal societies, where the richest 20 per cent of the population earns two thirds of the country’s income. A child growing up in the poorest home in South Africa is 17 times more likely to be hungry and 25 times less likely to be covered by medical schemes compared to a child growing up in the wealthiest household. A significant proportion of children live in poverty – 62.1 per cent of children live in households with a per capita income of less than R570 per month.

As a knowledge hub, PAN: Children provides a link between evidence, policy and practice, aiming to:

• Bring together the best available knowledge on the situation of children in South Africa; 
• Provide practical understanding and advice on designing, implementing and evaluating policies and programme interventions to address systemic bottlenecks to the realization of child rights by drawing on national and international good practices and lessons learned; and
• Promote networking among researchers, policy makers and practitioners, creating a Community of Practice around key issues affecting children.

Download the remarks by UNICEF Representative Aida Girma at the launch [PDF]

To access PAN: Children, go to: http://children.pan.org.za