Provision to recruit a national institutional consultancy to harmonize data collection templates to generate standard justice for children indicators as per the attached TOR.

1. Background

In 2022, UNICEF commissioned a study to assess routine data collection gaps in the Justice for Children Sector in Sri Lanka. This assessment was completed and launched in 2023 under the leadership of the Ministry of Justice.

The assessment included consultations with key experts, various government departments and civil society organizations. It also included a thorough review of administrative data for child protection and justice for children, focusing on aspects such as the collection process, quality assurance, auditing, and the utilization of collected data. The review encompassed an examination of existing legal and normative frameworks for data and statistics, identifying gaps that required attention. Additionally, the assessment focused on analyzing a number of databases related to Child Protection in Sri Lanka, and documented data flows, identified duplications, and proposed measures to enhance efficiency.

The assessment findings suggest that the data collection system requires much needed improvement, and that templates and tools for data collection need to be developed for the use of Justice for Children (J4C) partners such as the Sri Lanka Police, the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Probation and Childcare Services (DPCCS). High-quality and reliable data on youth justice and child protection systems enables evidence-based policy development and implementation. It is also vital to the development of governance and regulatory structures and procedures; human resources development; identification of education and training needs; improved service delivery and financing; the ability to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the system, as well as being a valuable research tool.

Against this background, the main purpose of this consultancy is to support the Government of Sri Lanka to review and update their data collection templates to enable the generation of standard indicators. Accordingly, UNICEF proposes to contract a national institute to provide technical expertise for the above work.

1. Objectives and Purpose

Purpose:

To support the follow up and implementation of the recommendations of the ‘Assessment of Routine Data Collection Gaps in the J4C Sector’ with special emphasis on developing data collection templates and addressing delays in justice for children.  

Objective:

To support the Department of Probation and Child Care Services (DPCCS), Ministry of Justice (MoJ /Courts), and the Sri Lanka Police to review the existing data collection template forms to enable collection of data required to generate standard justice for children indicators, disaggregated by inter alia age, gender and locality.