Effects of the Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the causes of child death: a statistical study on a global scale

Abstract

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a Communications Procedure (OPCP) make commitments and guarantees in relation to child health. The aim of the study is to verify the effects of these commitments on the causes of child death. To analyze these effects, we apply the one-way analysis of variance. For each group, we calculated the averages of child deaths in their respective countries for the years 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017. The p-value resulting indicated whether there was a difference between the means of child deaths in those years that were compared. We also observed the time series for each cause of death over the years 2000 to 2017. The CRC has an expressive adhesion. OPCP has a smaller number of acceptors in all regions compared to CRC. The acceptance of OPCP did not significantly alter the results of the number of deaths in the accepting countries in any of the 13 causes of child death observed. In the non- accepting group, significant differences were found concerning five causes of child death: HIV/AIDS, diarrhoeal diseases, measles, meningitis/encephalitis, and acute lower respiratory infections (p-values 0.01, 0.01, 0.003, 0.002, and 0.003, respectively). Our results suggest that the group of countries that have accepted the OPCP are more committed to issues of child deaths causes studied. In all of them the annual death numbers were considerably lower in this group.

Keywords

• Child Health
• International Cooperation
• Human Rights
• Analysis of Variance