A/HRC/19/35 VI. Data collection 41. As reflected in the submissions by governments, few States collect or regularly update information about children in street situations – the main reasons cited being contested definitions; methodological difficulties due to the children‟s elusiveness and mobility; lack of investment in research; and lack of policy leadership. However, recent advances, made in all four areas, encourage more systematic and appropriate data collection. 42. Despite the lack of agreement on definitions, a number of States have conducted well-designed, national or city-wide studies by clarifying the definitions they are using. Thus, definitional difficulties are not an insuperable barrier for data collection. Recent advances in terminology, such “children in street situations,” used by the Committee and current work around “street connections,” suggest new avenues for reaching international agreement on definitions and terminology consistent with a rights-based, holistic approach. 43. Some key methodological difficulties have been addressed by various innovative means, for example, counting and describing populations of children in the streets, the capture-recapture method used with respondent-driven sampling and to gather qualitative information about their circumstances and experiences, and the rapid assessment method developed by UNICEF and ILO. Meanwhile, NGOs working with children in street situations have conducted innovative data collection at city-level, including repeat studies at regular intervals for trends and head counts by teams of social workers using triangulation and peer review. 44. One main challenge for States has been investing in research with children. This has been tackled in the closely related field of child labour, through inter-agency collaboration, for example, the Understanding Children‟s Work research programme of ILO, UNICEF and the World Bank – suggesting that a similar route could be developed with children in street situations. Child labour data collection is supported by ILO‟s Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme on Child Labour (SIMPOC), launched in 1998 with contributions from donor countries to provide a solid information base for appropriate research methodologies on child labour. SIMPOC assists countries with data collection, provides guidance on how to process and analyse data, offers a variety of statistical tools, micro datasets and survey reports available online, and also produces global and regional estimates of child labour regularly. 45. A second difficulty has been the lack of policy leadership to implement systematic, disaggregated data collection and information systems around children in street situations. There is also increasing interest in finding cost-effective ways to prevent violations of children‟s rights and restore rights to children – an interest to which civil society and the private sector are beginning to respond with evidence-based studies. 46. Data collection, analysis and development of indicators are all essential to implementing and assessing the rights enshrined in the Convention with respect to children in street situations. An appropriate framework for data collection concerning streetconnected children should, then, reflect a rights-based approach, a holistic approach to children‟s experiences and a systemic approach to interventions and policy-making. In this respect, the Committee recommends that States develop a comprehensive and coordinated system of data collection, comprising disaggregated data so as to be able to identify discrimination and/or disparities in the realization of rights. Without appropriate data collection, it is difficult to detect obstacles to implementation or recognize progress achieved in programmes or interventions in terms of rights-based outcomes for children. Children, as experts on their own lives, should be enabled to participate in data collection, as well as in the analysis and dissemination of research. 12