is that they are responsible to implement this policy by mainstreaming children’s rights in policies, laws and programs. The EAC Secretariat’s role is therefore to coordinate the implementation of the policy and provide institutional capacity for the implementation of children’s rights. She noted that the EAC Child Policy priority areas are related to the 10 aspirations of the Agenda 2040. It is important to collaborate with other RECs so that we can move forward together to achieve the aspirations and learn from each other. This is especially important if cross border issues are to be addressed. The hope is eventually that all regional child acts will be superseded by a regional child law to enable harmonization and effective protection of children’s rights. 4.2. Plenary Discussion: During the consideration of the presentation and plenary discussion, the following were highlighted: a. One of the key issues that was brought up by a number of participants is how do we ensure coordination and accountability to the Charter, Agenda 2040 and the EAC Child Policy. How will reporting for the ACERWC integrate reporting on the EAC child policy as well? As CSOs, which ones do we implement? If we have all these different frameworks, how do we ensure they don’t contradict each other? Are we meant to be promoting and working towards them all? How will all the child policies developed by REC’s be harmonized? Is the Agenda 2040 not sufficient for us to implement? It was felt that perhaps the existence of various policies creates extra work in terms of reporting for states and makes it hard to know what you are accountable for. The EAC representative explained that it will be important to engage national government and develop national action plans to uphold the Child policy and the Agenda. The Child Policy is very aligned with the Agenda so the same processes will address both. It was felt there will not be any confusion or duplication as the priority areas in the EAC Child Policy and the Agenda 2040 are aligned. The RECs role is to coordinate and not to implement but CSOs and National Governments will be the ones implementing. An action plan has been developed for the 10 priority areas and within each there are strategies for how to address each area. The EAC will work with the ACERWC to develop harmonized reporting mechanisms for both. The EAC already have a dashboard online where they are tracking the data. A baseline has already been carried out and so the same tools can be used for ongoing monitoring. Additionally, the EAC has developed minimum standards that can be used as benchmarks to measure progress. b. It was suggested that the Secretariat of the ACERWC needs to meet with the EAC to make their role clearer regarding the aspirations in the Agenda 2040 and how they can support in the realization of that. It is important to have clear roles on how EAC will engage the partner states when ACERWC makes recommendations to partner states. EAC can be instrumental in domesticating the principles of Agenda