| Overview : In West Africa, thousands of children still face problems such as exploitation through trafficking, social practices and cultures prejudicial to their well-being, violence and abuse. In addition, in the face of the political and economic crises with which the States are confronted, the public resources dedicated to investment in the protection of children remain very insignificant despite the demographic weight of these children in the region. Aware of this situation and in accordance with its mandate to promote and protect human rights in West Africa, the Regional Office for West Africa of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has requested and obtained the support of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation for the implementation of a Support Project for the Protection of Children Victims of Violations of their Rights (PAPEV). The project concerns six countries in the West African region, namely Senegal, Mali, Guinea Bissau, Niger, Guinea Conakry and The Gambia. The implementation of the PAPEV essentially aims to promote national child protection systems integrating in their actions the consideration of the recommendations on the rights of the child formulated by the treaty bodies and other mechanisms for the protection of the child. The PAPEV Project provides an opportunity to strengthen regional cooperation on child protection to reinforce the goodwill of states to work for the promotion of children's rights in the community space. Thus, in its contextual analysis, the Project identified as the key challenge the absence of a hormonised and integrated mechanism for collecting data on questions related to violence, abuse, maltreatment and exploitation of children which can undertaken to be used to measure the impact of actions to mitigate these problems. In the various countries where the project is being implemented, this question arises and affects the quality of the interventions carried out to protect children against violations of their rights. The limited or absence of integrated and harmonized mechanisms for collecting data on issues related to violence, mistreatment, abuse and exploitation of children is a real obstacle to measuring the impact of the actions proposed to combat these issues. This critical need has been observed the Committee on the Right of the Child which included as part of its recommendations to the Gambia Governments to take measures to establish a comprehensive data collection system with the support of its partners (CRC/C/15/Add.165, para. 16). The data should cover all areas of the Convention, including child labour, child trafficking, child mortality, sexual abuse and exploitation of children, and domestic violence against children… Thus, in order to contribute to the attainment of having a harmonised data collection mechanism on children in The Gambia, the PAPEV has included in its priorities support to commission a study to evaluate the situation on the collection of data on child protection in The Gambia. Objective The general objective of this study is to contribute to strengthening the knowledge base on child protection issues by strengthening national mechanisms for collecting data on violations of children's rights. Specifically, this concerns conducting research with the following objectives: Take stock of the mechanisms /tools for collecting data on child protection issues in The Gambia; Evaluate the functionality of the mechanisms / tools for collecting data on child protection in The Gambia; Identifying the limitations of the existing mechanisms / tools Recommend and or propose a data collection mechanism that takes into account the Judicial, institutional and social context of The Gambia, the dynamics upon which the child protection system rests upon, the national child protection policy and child protection laws and their integration into The Gambia’s national statistics.
Submit Technial and Financial proposls to: bids.gm@undp.org Email subject: "Child Data Collection Mechanisms" | 
