Review of child poverty in Save the Children Sweden’s international work for children’s rights

This review has been carried out in order to comply with a 2009 Save the Children Sweden (SCS) board decision to assess how SCS’s work has contributed to combat poverty among children and young people. According to the terms of reference, the purpose of the review is to:
– Define a framework for how SCS priorities, programme indicators and a rights-based approach relate to poverty reduction
– Assess how SCS’s focus on a child rights-based approach has contributed to eradication of child poverty.
In order to find out how UN agencies, bilateral donors and other NGOs conceptualise child poverty an extensive literature study was carried out. SCS overall planning documents as well as 2006-2010 strategic plans and annual reports for the three regions that were chosen by SCS to be included in the review (South and Central Asia, SCA, Latin America and West Africa) were also read and analysed. Interviews were carried out with head office staff as well as employees in the three regions.
A set of questions were sent to the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Sida in order to get some clarification on how they perceive the relationship between the two perspectives of the Policy for Global Development (PGU); the rights perspective and the perspective of the poor.