Mamadou KEBE
Child rights and child protection expert, public policy analyst and
founder of AÏWARA — September 2026

Key finding

The comparison of institutional scenarios supports transforming the
current Directorate for the Promotion of Child Rights and Child
Protection (DPDPE) into a Directorate-General for the Promotion
of Child Rights and Child Protection, subject to a functional,
organisational and budgetary audit. The purpose is not to add another
administrative layer. It is to equip the State with an identifiable
centre of strategic leadership able to steer a multisectoral policy,
consolidate results and account for them, without removing sector
ministries’ responsibilities.

Abstract

This article examines the normative framework, administrative
architecture, programme-based budgeting, coordination mechanisms, data
systems and partnerships as interdependent components of child-rights
governance. It shows that institutional plurality becomes problematic
when sector specialisation is not matched by sufficient capacity for
policy coherence, arbitration, continuity of services and
accountability. Five criteria — relevance, coherence, effectiveness,
efficiency and accountability — are used to compare four scenarios: a
strengthened status quo, a strengthened interministerial mechanism, a
directorate-general and a national agency.

Keywords

Child rights; child protection; public governance; intersectoral
coordination; programme-based budgeting; accountability; institutional
reform; Senegal.

1.
A cross-cutting policy without a sufficiently clear centre of strategic
leadership

Policies concerning children present a structural paradox. Children’s
rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent, yet their
implementation involves a wide range of specialised public
administrations. Education and health do not operate through the same
chain of command; juvenile justice follows requirements different from
those governing social services; civil registration, security, social
protection, early childhood development and territorial administration
each have their own institutions and instruments. This plurality is not
inherently dysfunctional. It is a normal consequence of the
multidimensional nature of children’s rights.

A public-policy problem arises when sector specialisation is no
longer balanced by sufficiently robust mechanisms for coherence,
strategic leadership, information-sharing and accountability. The
question is then no longer simply whether each sector performs its
mandate, but whether the system as a whole delivers, from the child’s
perspective, a continuum of rights and services. A country may have
numerous projects, committed professionals and several coordination
mechanisms while responsibilities, financing, data and results remain
fragmented.

This concern is supported by a recent external assessment. In its
February 2024 concluding observations, the Committee on the Rights of
the Child called on Senegal to ensure that the National Intersectoral
Committee for Child Protection coordinates all activities relating to
implementation of the Convention across the relevant services at
national, regional and local levels and is provided with adequate
resources. The Committee also identified shortcomings in resourcing,
budget traceability and coordinated data collection (Committee on the
Rights of the Child, 2024, paras. 8–10). These recommendations do not
prescribe a particular administrative form, but they identify governance
functions that need to be strengthened.

The purpose of this article is therefore analytical rather than
corporatist: first, to determine which governance functions are required
to turn a plurality of actors into an integrated system; and second, to
assess which institutional form appears most consistent with those
functions. It does not assume that a new structure is desirable in
principle. Any reform is justified only if it reduces fragmentation,
clarifies responsibilities and improves outcomes for children.

2. Method and analytical
caution

The study draws on documentary, institutional and functional analysis
across five groups of sources: international and African child-rights
instruments; official Senegalese documents on administrative
organisation and the National Child Protection Strategy; budget
documents; observations issued by the Committee on the Rights of the
Child; and public-management literature on horizontal coordination,
whole-of-government approaches and network governance. This
triangulation makes it possible to compare legal standards, formal
architecture, resources and accountability mechanisms rather than infer
performance from the organisational chart alone.

One important limitation must be acknowledged. Budget programme 2130
is an aggregate covering family policy, children and social protection
for vulnerable groups. The public sources reviewed do not provide a
sufficiently detailed and stable breakdown to isolate all expenditure
attributable to children and child protection. This article therefore
makes no estimate of a “children’s budget”. This methodological
restraint is essential: imperfect visibility within a budget aggregate
should not be converted into a degree of precision that the available
evidence cannot support.

3. From
indivisible rights to an integrated system

Indivisibility means that rights cannot be ranked arbitrarily:
education, health, identity, participation, social protection and
protection from violence form part of the same body of obligations.
Interdependence means that the realisation of one right directly affects
the enjoyment of others. Lack of civil registration can restrict access
to school, benefits or justice; school exclusion can increase exposure
to exploitation; and household poverty can amplify several risk factors.
These principles have a direct consequence for public-policy analysis:
while administrations necessarily remain sector-based, governance must
restore the unity of rights within public decision-making.

This distinction is central to institutional reform. Creating or
strengthening a strategic leadership body does not mean concentrating
every competence within it. An integrated system instead depends on
strong, specialised and accountable sectors connected through a common
architecture of standards, information, results and accountability.

Figure 1. From the child-rights framework to governance — Source:
author’s analysis based on the Convention on the Rights of the Child,
the African Charter and UNICEF frameworks.

4.
Senegal’s institutional architecture: legitimate plurality and
interfaces to be strengthened

Decree No. 2026-1133 of 1 June 2026 provides the current
administrative reference. Responsibilities concerning children remain
distributed across several sectors. Within the Ministry of Family,
Social Action and Solidarity, the Directorate for the Promotion of Child
Rights and Child Protection (DPDPE) remains operational in 2026. The
Child Protection Support Unit (CAPE) and the reception, information and
referral centre for children in difficult circumstances also operate in
this field. The continued existence of these bodies demonstrates a
specialised administrative core, but also raises questions about the
precise allocation of policy development, coordination, implementation,
data and partnership functions (Republic of Senegal, 2026; APS,
2026).

Within the Ministry of Justice, the Directorate-General for Judicial
and Social Protection (DGPJS) has a strong and specialised architecture.
Its remit includes the protection, rehabilitation and reintegration of
children in conflict with the law, victims or witnesses, as well as
children and young people at risk. It comprises several directorates,
including those responsible for judicial protection, protection
institutions and intercountry adoption (Ministry of Justice, 2026). This
structure is consistent with the specificity of judicial protection, but
judicial protection does not encompass every administrative, social and
preventive dimension of child protection.

The relevant question is therefore not how to eliminate institutional
plurality. It is whether the interfaces are sufficiently organised to
prevent blind spots, duplication, breakdowns in referral and diffusion
of responsibility. Whole-of-government theory emphasises that
multidimensional problems require a shared strategic vision, coherent
priorities and coordination arrangements capable of operating across
administrative boundaries (OECD, 2019).

Figure 2. An intrinsically multisectoral policy — Source:
author’s analysis.

5.
From coordination to strategic leadership and accountability

Public-management research shows that the tension between
specialisation and coordination is structural. Peters argues that
specialised administration may improve expertise and service quality
while generating duplication, inconsistency and growing demands for
horizontal coordination across government (Peters, 1998, 2015). The aim
is not to remove specialisation, but to establish mechanisms that can
govern interdependence.

The whole-of-government approach developed in response to the
fragmentation associated with single-purpose organisations and dispersed
responsibilities. It seeks to restore the State’s capacity to address
cross-cutting problems through shared objectives, coordination
mechanisms and more clearly organised collective responsibility
(Christensen & Lægreid, 2007). Children’s rights are a particularly
relevant case: their indivisibility makes sector specialisation
inevitable, while their interdependence requires coherent government
action.

Coordination is often presented as the natural answer to
cross-sectoral policy challenges. It is indispensable, but it is not
sufficient. A policy may have committees, commissions, consultation
frameworks and periodic meetings without resolving three deeper
problems: inconsistent incentives, lack of arbitration authority and
fragmented accountability.

This is not merely a theoretical concern. In 2024, the Committee on
the Rights of the Child asked the national intersectoral mechanism to
coordinate effectively all activities related to the Convention at
national, regional and local levels (para. 8). It also called for
sufficient human, technical and financial resources to be allocated to
the DPDPE for implementation of the National Child Protection Strategy
and sustainable programmes addressing the root causes of violence and
abuse (para. 21(a)). These recommendations point simultaneously to
institutional capacity and coordination authority.

Fragmentation may also affect accountability. Each ministry can
report on its own activities while no single institution is clearly
answerable for cross-cutting outcomes: reductions in violence, effective
territorial coverage, response times, continuity of the child’s pathway
through services, service quality or reduced disparities. The governance
challenge can therefore be framed as follows: who is accountable for
aggregate outcomes for children when operational responsibilities are
legitimately distributed?

Figure 3. Fragmentation and integration — Source: author’s
analysis.

6.
Programme-based budgeting as a test of the accountability chain

The situation changed in 2026. The initial Finance Act identifies
three programmes within the Ministry of Family, Social Action and
Solidarity. Programme 2130, “Family, Children and Social Protection for
Vulnerable Groups”, receives CFAF 104.178 billion in payment
appropriations. This figure is not a “children’s budget”; it is an
aggregate covering several policy areas and categories of beneficiaries
(Ministry of Finance and Budget, 2026). By contrast, the 2025 budget
implementation documents identified a separate “Children” programme,
making the evolution in budget visibility particularly important to
examine (Ministry of Finance and Budget, 2025).

The need for traceability directly reflects the 2024 concluding
observations. The Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that
Senegal conduct a comprehensive assessment of budget requirements
concerning children and establish a budgeting mechanism that clearly
identifies resources allocated to children across sectors and agencies,
supported by indicators and a tracking system (Committee on the Rights
of the Child, 2024, para. 9(e)). The budget debate therefore concerns
not only the level of appropriations, but also the capacity to trace how
those resources contribute to the realisation of children’s rights.

Budgeting thus becomes a test of governance. A cross-cutting policy
must be visible not only in official statements and organisational
charts, but also in programming, indicators and the performance chain.
The useful question is not simply “how much is being spent?” but “can
the resources mobilised be connected to identifiable objectives and to
an authority capable of explaining the results?”

Figure 4. What the budget architecture reveals — The 2026 amount
is an aggregate, not a child-specific budget.

7.
Partnerships and territorial delivery: moving from projects to
systems

Where national leadership is insufficiently clear, partners may,
without intending to fragment public action, finance directorates,
units, non-governmental organisations, territorial mechanisms or data
systems separately. Each intervention may be relevant in isolation, yet
their cumulative effect may produce competing incentives, parallel
tools, geographical concentration of resources or mechanisms that last
only as long as a project. The objective must therefore shift from
supporting juxtaposed structures and projects to strengthening the
national system.

Alignment must nevertheless be understood within the State’s
international obligations. It does not mean automatic adherence to every
administrative priority. External resources should support nationally
defined priorities consistent with the Convention on the Rights of the
Child and the African Charter, and should use national results, data and
monitoring frameworks wherever possible.

Continuity in the child’s pathway through services then becomes a
composite indicator of system maturity. Identification, assessment,
referral, immediate protection, care, judicial intervention where
necessary, follow-up and reintegration must form a chain. A breakdown
between two institutions can negate the quality of the work undertaken
upstream. Governance should therefore assess not only the number of
activities or structures, but also the functioning of their
interfaces.

Figure 5. Continuity in the child’s pathway as a practical test
of the system — Source: author’s analysis.

8. Five criteria for
assessing governance

Institutional reform should be assessed against explicit criteria;
otherwise, debate risks being reduced to preferences about
organisational form. The following matrix can be applied both to the
current architecture and to reform scenarios.

9. Comparing four
institutional scenarios

Creating a new entity should never be treated as an end in itself. It
must be compared with less costly or less disruptive alternatives. Four
scenarios warrant consideration.

The first is a strengthened status quo: retain the current
specialised directorate while increasing its resources, clarifying its
mandate and improving coordination mechanisms. Its principal advantage
is institutional restraint. Its limitation is that additional resources
without a change in positioning may leave arbitration and accountability
constraints unresolved.

The second is a strengthened interministerial mechanism located at a
high political or administrative level, responsible for setting
priorities, monitoring results and arbitrating differences. This
scenario can reinforce a whole-of-government approach, but its
effectiveness depends heavily on a permanent technical secretariat,
adequate resources and authoritative decisions. Coordination mechanisms
without resources or arbitration capacity can quickly become
intermittent.

The third scenario is a Directorate-General for the Promotion of
Child Rights and Child Protection. This option keeps the function within
central government, facilitates alignment with the State budget and
could bring together under one strategic leadership functions that are
currently dispersed: policy development, coordination, data, quality
assurance, territorial delivery and partnerships. It would be justified
only if it genuinely rationalised existing structures rather than
becoming an additional administrative layer.

The fourth scenario is a national agency. This option offers
managerial autonomy and may be suitable for highly operational mandates.
Senegalese law on implementing agencies, however, requires an
opportunity and impact assessment, reflecting the legislature’s
intention to prevent overlap and the proliferation of parallel entities.
For a primarily strategic, normative and interministerial function, an
agency could displace the coordination problem rather than solve it,
unless a highly specific operational mandate justified its autonomy
(Republic of Senegal, 2009; Republic of Senegal, 2022).

Figure 6. Four institutional scenarios for strengthening
governance — Source: AÏWARA analysis, 2026.

10.
Recommended option: strengthen the State’s strategic leadership

The analysis points towards a target architecture based on one
principle: the State should retain clear strategic leadership while each
sector remains fully responsible for its mandate. Reform should not seek
to absorb justice, health, education, civil registration, social
protection or territorial action into a single structure. It should
govern their interdependencies, clarify responsibilities and establish a
centre able to consolidate results.

At a minimum, this governance level should perform seven functions:
(1) normative monitoring and follow-up of child-rights commitments; (2)
planning and a common results framework; (3) intersectoral coordination
and arbitration mechanisms; (4) quality standards, protocols and
continuity of pathways; (5) data consolidation, monitoring and
evaluation, and publication of results; (6) territorial delivery and
support to local mechanisms; and (7) structured dialogue with partners
and mapping of financing.

The model can be summarised in one rule: one national policy, one
identifiable institutional lead, one common results framework, one
consolidated map of financing and one annual review bringing together
the State, sectors, territories and partners. This is consistent with
the principles of effective development co-operation: country ownership,
a focus on results, inclusive partnerships, transparency and mutual
accountability.

Within this framework, a directorate-general is a robust
institutional option for functions that are principally strategic and
administrative: leadership, standards, planning, coordination, data,
monitoring and dialogue with partners. It cannot, however, be selected
solely because the sector is important. A functional, organisational and
budgetary audit must compare costs, identify competencies to be
rationalised, determine which interfaces can be simplified and assess
added value against a strengthened status quo or a permanently resourced
interministerial mechanism. A national agency would become relevant only
if an autonomous implementation function, distinct from the State’s
strategic and regulatory responsibilities, were objectively
demonstrated.

Why a directorate-general

Because the functions requiring reinforcement are primarily
strategic, normative and administrative: strategic leadership, planning,
coordination, data, quality standards, territorial delivery, monitoring
and evaluation, and dialogue with partners. An agency would be
preferable only if a distinct need for autonomous implementation were
demonstrated. The directorate-general must result from the
rationalisation of existing functions, not their accumulation.

Figure 7. Core functions of an effective governance architecture
— Source: author’s analysis.

11. Three necessary shifts

Start with
functions, not the organisational chart

Reform should not begin with the question “what structure should be
created?” but with “which public functions are not being performed
adequately?” This reversal is methodologically essential. It prevents
reflexive institution-building and requires the intended added value to
be documented. It also allows rationalisation: some functions may be
combined, others should remain sectoral, and others may be assigned to
interministerial mechanisms.

Account for
results, not merely coordinate actors

Coordination should be assessed by its effects. An intersectoral
meeting has value only if it resolves practical problems: referral
times, data-sharing, territorial coverage, budget arbitration, standards
of care and responses to emerging risks. Governance should therefore be
organised around a limited number of national and territorial results
with identifiable responsible authorities and indicators.

Consolidate
the system, not a succession of projects

International co-operation should strengthen sustainable national
capacity. This requires mapping financing, adopting common indicators,
increasing the use of national systems and maintaining regular dialogue
on underfunded areas, duplication and post-project sustainability. The
same principle applies to innovation: a partner-funded pilot should be
institutionalised only after its relevance, cost, transferability and
sustainability have been assessed.

12. Conclusion

Senegal does not lack actors working for children. It has a national
strategy, specialised professionals, territorial mechanisms, a dedicated
directorate, a specialised directorate-general within the Ministry of
Justice, sector services and major partners. The diagnosis concerns
governance: how can this institutional plurality be converted into
coherence, continuity of services and accountability for shared results?
The Committee on the Rights of the Child’s 2024 concluding observations
reinforce this diagnosis by focusing explicitly on intersectoral
coordination, budget traceability, data and the resourcing of competent
structures.

The 2026 budget aggregation, the distribution of functions across
sectors and the diversity of external support do not, individually,
prove that a directorate-general or national agency is required. Taken
together, however, they justify a thorough assessment of the current
architecture. The central issue is not the creation of an additional
structure, but the restoration of a centre of strategic leadership able
to set direction, harmonise action, monitor delivery and account for
results.

Any appropriate reform should therefore respect a rule of
institutional caution: create only what demonstrably reduces
fragmentation. On that condition, stronger national leadership for child
rights and child protection can become not a reform of the
organisational chart, but a reform of public-sector performance and
accountability to children.

Essential references

• Christensen, T. & Lægreid, P. (2007). The
  Whole-of-Government Approach to Public Sector Reform. Public
  Administration Review, 67(6), 1059–1066.
• Committee on the Rights of the Child (2024). Concluding
  observations on the combined sixth and seventh periodic reports of
  Senegal (CRC/C/SEN/CO/6-7).
• Ministry of Finance and Budget (2025, 2026). 2025 budget
  implementation documents and 2026 initial Finance Bill.
• OECD (2005, 2011, 2019). Paris Declaration; Busan Partnership;
  Governance as an SDG Accelerator.
• Peters, B. G. (1998, 2015). Research on horizontal coordination and
  public management.
• Provan, K. G. & Kenis, P. (2008). Modes of Network
  Governance: Structure, Management, and Effectiveness. Journal of
  Public Administration Research and Theory, 18(2), 229–252.
• Republic of Senegal (2009, 2022, 2026). Framework laws on agencies
  and the parastatal sector; Decree No. 2026-1133 of 1 June 2026.
• African Union (1990). African Charter on the Rights and Welfare
  of the Child.
• UNICEF (2021, 2023, 2024). Child Protection Strategy; child
  protection systems strengthening; Senegal Country Programme
  2024–2028.

About the author

Mamadou KEBE is a child rights and child protection expert, public
policy analyst and founder of AÏWARA. A former national director for
child rights and child protection, he works on policy analysis, training
and support concerning human rights, social protection and children.