The GlobalChild project is comprised of a group of international child rights academics and advocates, with a mandate to create a comprehensive electronic monitoring platform for the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The overarching aim of the platform is to operationalise all substantive rights under the CRC by creating indicator sets to facilitate the implementation and monitoring of each right. The 41 indicators sets collectively (developed based on the provisions of the 41 substantive articles of the CRC) would streamline the processes of monitoring implementation of the CRC and producing periodical reports to the Committee. While GlobalChild will effectively serve this international obligation, the platform will also provide data on the structures and processes that support different rights vis-a-vis outcome data on children’s health and development. Analysis of such data sets will assist in bringing the gaps in capacities to the attention of politicians, policy makers and other stakeholders who are in the position to make decisions, plan budgets, and advocate for policy or program change.

GlobalChild is a 5+5 years project dedicated to developing a comprehensive child rights monitoring platform based on the SPO model, a framework advised by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), comprised of Structure, Process and Outcome indicators. In its first five years, the team built the indicator sets, created the structure of the platform, and then populated the platform with the developed indicators. The platform, called GlobalChild, is now ready to be piloted in Canada, starting with the home province of New Brunswick, and internationally, with the first pilot already underway in Belgium. In the subsequent five years, working in close collaboration with the Committee, GlobalChild will be piloted in one country from each of the five regions of the globe prior to its global deployment. The vision for GlobalChild is to become the single CRC report-writing tool for all 197 governments across the globe, and to provide a central monitoring system and database for both the CRC and the child-focused targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) globally.