Child Protection Index in Armenia
On April 12, 2016, after piloting the Child Protection Index in nine countries (Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Serbia, Moldova, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Romania), a team of experts gathered again to improve its methodology and the indicators framework.
The workshop in Belgrade was dedicated to reevaluating the Child Protection Index main frame with focus on UNCRC articles and discussing the improvement of this powerful regional instrument by the experts worked on collecting data for the pilot.
ChildPact has decided to develop a Child Protection Index to identify needs and gaps in child protection systems. The pilot phase of the Child Protection Index showed that the situation of child protection is far from being ideal. The data collection experts who participated in the pilot phase were faced with a huge gap between legislation and implementation.
A quick glance at the preliminary results showed that the Armenian legal system regarding child protection is very comprehensive. All international child protection instruments are ratified, but legal provisions are rarely put in practice.
The CPI is likely to become a very useful tool for orienting the lobbing strategies on specific issues and advocating for better policies to protect vulnerable children. Fighting for improvements in certain areas will be easier due to the clear picture at the national level, but also because we will be able to make comparisons with the neighboring countries. This opens the way to a healthy competition between countries and this is one of the most important added values of the Child Protection Index.
