State-Civil Society Relations The Importance of Civil Society for the Implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

This paper explores the international comparative potential of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) monitoring process. Interest in such comparisons has increased in recent years; however, several factors limit the efficacy of using CRC reporting documents for cross-national comparisons. Focussing on the role of civil society organisations (C SO s) in the CRC reporting process, we examine how state reliance on CSO s to perform vital functions of the CRC might influence developments in children's rights and how these developments get monitored and recorded. Drawing on Social Origins theory, we illustrate how different state-civil society relationships can lead to heterogeneous and uneven provision of, and reporting on, children's rights issues, interventions and developments. Our evaluation leads us to problematise the use of the CRC Concluding Observations to compare the performance of States Parties on their duty to protect the rights of the child.