A/HRC/16/54 (c) The promotion of a national system of data collection, analysis and dissemination, and a research agenda on violence against children. A. A national comprehensive strategy 6. A national strategy is at the core of effective action to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against children. It helps to shape a vision and generate long-term and sustained commitment to build a safe society where children may grow up free from violence. With strategic, time-bound targets, and informed by sound data and research, it provides a road map to mobilize action, resources and support to stimulate and monitor progress, and promote a process of lasting change. To be effective, a strategy needs to meet critical requirements, including being mainstreamed into the national policy and development agenda, to avoid being perceived as an afterthought and ignored when key policy and budgetary decisions are made; adequately supported by human and financial resources; and evaluated on a regular basis. It also needs to be coordinated by a high-level focal point with leading responsibilities in children’s issues and with authority to articulate activities across governmental departments, in association with relevant stakeholders, including civil society. 7. Violence against children has an impact on all children’s rights and requires the effective engagement of all levels of public administration and the involvement of all relevant ministries, including health, education and social affairs, gender, justice, migration and home affairs, planning, economy and finance. 8. In the overall framework of follow-up to the United Nations study and cooperation with the Special Representative, recent months have been marked by significant commitments made by intergovernmental and regional organizations, and the promotion of strategic initiatives supporting the development and implementation of national strategies for the protection of children from violence. In some cases, time-bound goals have also been agreed on to move this process forward. This is well illustrated by significant regional initiatives2 and policy decisions, including those taken by the South Asian Initiative to End Violence against Children, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and the Council of Europe. 9. In 2010, Governments in South Asia formed the South Asian Initiative to End Violence against Children3 and adopted a strategic plan for 2010–2015 to coordinate, standardize and monitor progress annually. One of its strategic objectives is the development in all States of a comprehensive national strategy, policy or plan of action on violence against children, integrated into the national planning process with realistic timebound targets and adequate resources, and coordinated and monitored by a nodal agency with the human and financial capacity to involve multiple sectors. 10. The 2009 Cairo Declaration, adopted by the States members of OIC, recommended the adoption of all appropriate legislative, social and other measures for an effective followup to the recommendations of the United Nations study, and specifically called on the establishment by each State of a high-level focal point to coordinate all actions to prevent 2 3 4 National planning for the protection of children’s rights including protection from violence also received critical attention at the XX Pan American Child Congress, held in September 2009 in Peru; the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child in its 2010 thematic session on violence against children (fifteenth session, March 2010); and the High-level Meeting on SouthSouth Cooperation for Child Rights in the Asia Pacific Region, held in November 2010 in Beijing. The Initiative builds upon the South-Asia Forum for Ending Violence against Children, established in 2005, in Islamabad, by the regional consultation for South Asia on violence against children. GE.11-11445