What’s New in Human and Social Development? (Fall Term)

Course description

GlobalChild: A rights-based approach to child health and development

Friday, Sept. 8: 12:30 to 1:45 pm

Presenter: Ziba Vaghri, PhD, School of Public Health and Social Policy

Dr. Ziba Vaghri, of the School of Public Health and Social Policy at UVic, is an academic leader in global child health and human rights research, who is developing a child rights global monitoring platform that will be tested in New Brunswick, the Northwest Territories and BC. She is a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar and has more than 15 years of extensive research, international experience, significant awards, and a global network of researchers and practitioners all set on creating a seamless United Nations-endorsed, rights-based system to measure global child health and development.

GlobalChild (GC) is a comprehensive child rights monitoring platform which will facilitate and support the ability of the 196 signatory States of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child's (CRC)  to comply with their obligations under the UN CRC. The GlobalChild tool will correlate government policies and processes with child health and development outcomes. Importantly, it will pay particular attention to Canada’s Indigenous children. Dr Vaghri has built this program and her team upon a decade of work with the UN CRC. The work of the GlobalChild team will continue to be carried out under the auspices of the UN CRC with  funding from the Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR).