By: Prof. Philip D. Jaffé
Vice Chair, UN Committee on the Rights of The Child and Scientific Chair, ISPCAN Congress 2027 in Lugano, Switzerland
I recently attended the ISPCAN Rise Up Policy Forum in Melbourne. Two sessions left me with a sharpened conviction: protecting children’s rights cannot be separated from how resources are mobilized, allocated, spent and monitored. Commitments to child protection are only as real as the investment behind them — sustained, visible and adequate. Financing is central to a child rights agenda’s implementation and accountability.
Revisiting General Comment No. 19
The sessions sent me back to the Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No. 19 on public budgeting for the realization of children’s rights — a document I had read some years ago but not given recently the attention it deserves. Adopted in 2016, it interprets Article 4 of the Convention and sets out that public budget decision-making must be effective, efficient, equitable, transparent and sustainable, with particular attention to children in vulnerable situations. Its central message, echoed by the presenters, is simple but easy to overlook in practice: every stage of the budget cycle — planning, allocation, execution and review — either advances or undermines children’s rights.
From Identified Needs to Costed Proposals
Perhaps the clearest lesson for me was the importance of translating identified needs into credible, costed proposals. Child protection practitioners often know, from direct experience, that children require, inter alia, safe accommodation, specialist mental health care, accessible education, quality case management, prevention services and meaningful participation mechanisms. But that knowledge does not automatically translate into resources.
We have to step outside our role as service providers and become advocates who can explain what a service actually entails, i.e. estimate its cost, set out the consequences of underinvestment, and demonstrate the long-term social and economic value of prevention and early intervention. Costing is what turns a need into a case that finance ministries and funders can act on.
Costing also guards against vague commitments and unfunded mandates. It allows practitioners to ask the harder questions: Are programmes sufficiently resourced to reach all children who need them? Are staffing levels realistic? Is funding sustained, or limited to short-term project cycles that leave services fragile?
Practitioners as Active Participants, Not Passive Recipients
Another lesson: practitioners cannot afford to treat budgets as decisions made elsewhere, to be received rather than shaped. We need to consult, and be willing to be guided by specialized colleagues in finance, policy and data, alongside our advocacy partners — and, critically, by children themselves through meaningful participation.
Advocacy, in this sense, means making the case for budgets that are commensurate with the scale and complexity of the needs practitioners are responsible for addressing. That means drawing on evidence, data, lived experience, rights standards and costed options to build a compelling argument — and being prepared to compete, credibly, for public and institutional funding.
An Obligation and a Choice
Investment in children is a legal obligation. It is also a strategic choice, and an ethical one. Getting the budget conversation right is not a technical exercise on the margins of child protection work — it is often at the heart of the work.
Philip D. Jaffé is professor emeritus at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and the founding director of its Centre for Children’s Rights Studies. In 2018, he was elected to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and is currently its Vice Chair, serving a second mandate. In 2025 he was appointed Chair of Child Helpline International. A clinical and forensic psychologist trained in Switzerland and the USA, he remains a practicing clinical (licensed psychotherapist) and forensic psychologist, as well as a court-appointed expert witness. His main missions: being an impactful science practitioner and toggling between theory and practice focused on human rights. Info @ www.jaffe.ch
