Motivating municipal action for children: the Municipal Seal of Approval in Ceará, Brazil

This paper describes how municipalities in the state of Ceará (Brazil) were encouraged to compete to obtain a Municipal Seal of Approval, based on their performance in meeting children's needs and rights. It describes how the programme was implemented, including the criteria used to judge performance, the communication strategy to encourage municipal participation and the measures taken to avoid rewarding only the better-resourced municipalities. It also discusses the scheme's links with the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 1988 constitution, with its support for local rights and guardianship councils and for decentralization and local democracy. It describes the results, which included major declines in infant mortality and child malnutrition rates, and improved school attendance and health care, and considers the implications: the scheme's capacity to mobilize civil society, local authorities and mayors in ways which deliver measurable progress for children despite no monetary reward for the successful municipalities and the small UNICEF budget that supported it.