3 | The Child Rights Impact Assessment tool This stage considers the types of information available to complete a CRIA of the policy/ legislation. The CRC Committee recommends that CRIAs should be ‘based on input from children, civil society and experts, as well as from relevant government departments, academic research and experiences documented in the country or elsewhere’.24 The UN Human Rights Council’s Guiding Principles on Human Rights Impact Assessment of Economic Reforms emphasises the importance of securing the ‘meaningful participation’ of those likely to be affected by economic policy in any human rights impact assessment.25 Questions in this section prompt assessors to consider how children are involved in policy/ legislation processes, and what methods are being used to ensure authentic engagement. In engaging with children, global CRIA expert, Lisa Payne, recognises that there is a high degree of apprehensiveness about how to involve children in the policy development process. She suggests that assessors consider the following issues: • How are you going to identify who you need to talk to, about what, using what means? • What are the safeguarding issues? • What are you going to do with this information? • Is this engagement just a tokenistic or a tick-box exercise? • How are you going to let the children you’ve consulted know how you’ve used the information they’ve given you?26 Stage 3: Identifying potential impacts 9. What are the positive impacts of the policy/legislation on the rights of children? 10. What are the negative impacts of the policy/legislation on the rights of children? 11. What are the impacts on different groups of children of the policy/legislation? Stage 3 identifies the positive and negative impacts that the policy/legislation will have on children. This includes direct and indirect impacts on specific groups of children, as identified in Stage 1. 22 |