Effective monitoring requires reliable and useful data. There is a dire need for reliable scientific data, including statistics to monitor progress towards improving children’s lives. Data gathering must be effective and must be disaggregated to ensure appropriate targets are set – and met – for particular disadvantaged groups of children. The full potential of productive interaction between governments, international partners, African and other scholars and researchers and children’s rights advocates should be harnessed to provide data-based child advocacy. States should, in collaboration with national partners, generate solid national evidence on violence against children. The development of national and decentralised routine data collection systems to monitor States’ progress on the implementation of this Agenda, specifically, and the African Children’s Charter, generally, should be supported. States should put in place a monitoring and reporting process in order to develop a detailed understanding of the scale of the problem, and to track progress. To the extent possible, States should harmonise and integrate the monitoring of their national implementation plans with periodic State reporting to the African Children’s Committee and the UN CRC Committee, and under the Universal Periodic Review, the SDGs and other relevant international or national frameworks. 35