ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the question of whether the demand for data to monitor the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has resulted in better information to improve understanding of children's lives and to support the fulfilment of their rights. It examines two possible propositions: that social research has improved the human rights of children independently of the CRC; and that CRC reporting has improved data about children. The chapter explores the observations on State Party reports almost routinely mention the need for accurate, disaggregated data. The key change brought about within social research by the new sociology of childhood is that children are increasingly perceived as important in their own right. The claim that children are discriminated against in statistics is a major innovation of academic child research, although effectively ignored by children's-rights monitoring. In most childhood data, while the asymmetric relations that define children out of social life are taken for granted.
