A/HRC/31/33 elections every two years. The composition of the council ensures that gender, disability and ethnicity are represented. The council goes hand in hand with the Children’s Forum, a platform where children learn about their rights and explore children’s issues in their free time, and report their conclusions to the national Parliament and to local authorities. 37 47. In its submission, Plan International informed OHCHR how ongoing participatory budget initiatives or other processes for citizen participation – facilitated by government or by civil society actors – can also provide important platforms for enabling children’s participation in budgeting. States should establish partnerships with civil society organizations to build collaborative platforms that can contribute to budgeting and expenditure monitoring processes and enable the participation of children, particularly of those otherwise difficult to reach. In Guatemala, for example, Plan International, together with ChildHope, supported children and adolescents working in collaboration with civil society and municipal authorities in three municipalities to analyse existing barriers for young people to enjoy their rights and entitlement to health, nutrition, water and sanitation, education, protection, recreation and participation. Following their analysis, they jointly prioritized issues and developed a public policy draft and related plan of action, which were presented to the municipal council by children and adolescents. Using the above approach, three municipalities adopted their municipal public policy on children and adolescents, allocating a total of $12,662,620 in a four-year budget. 48. Success cannot, however, be measured simply in numbers. In order to be effective, States need to establish spaces where children from all sectors of society, including the most vulnerable, can engage with public officials and other decision-makers to discuss their concerns and put forward their recommendations. As stated by one child, “there should be stronger communication between those who make the decisions and those who ‘get’ the consequences of those decisions.”38 One example of this situation can be seen in Bahrain, where various groups of children participated in activities related to budgetary allocation during the development of the national strategy for childhood. Focus group discussions comprised multi-ethnic children and parents of different social and economic backgrounds to identify children’s needs and priorities. On the basis of the results of these discussions, a plan of action, with a detailed budget for the implementation process, was developed. 49. Children also need their own space and organizations – online and offline – where they can meet, learn about their rights and how the budget works, share experiences and take joint action. To this end, States need to address the legal and administrative challenges faced by children in forming their own organizations, including registration. Furthermore, children need access to child-friendly, age-appropriate and timely budget and other fiscal information (see para. 40 above). Without timely, comprehensible information, it is difficult for children to engage meaningfully in these processes. For example, the Children and Youth Foundation of the Philippines was supported by Save the Children and local civil society organizations in analysing their medium-term development plan for children (20122016), looking at the availability of programmes and budget allocations, access to and the quality of programmes and projects, and project implementation. Information and communications technology can be particularly influential in this regard. ICT allows children to gain access to information, to benefit from peer-to-peer learning and to communicate quickly and cheaply.39 37 38 39 Submission from Eurochild. Lundy, Towards Better Investment in the Rights of the Child (see footnote 30), p. 22. Submission from Save the Children. 13