including the protection of children’s rights. The HRCSL has exercised its powers to protect children. For example, it has worked with a number of institutions to prevent and ensure the prosecution of girls into secret societies resulting in their undergoing FGM/C. It has, with the support of partners advocated successfully for a number of traditional and local leaders to develop by-laws prohibiting the forced initiation of children under the age of 18 years and to impose sanctions on the practice (HRCSL, 2012). A key factor inhibiting the efficacy of the HRCSL has been limited resources. To address this concern, the GoSL has increased budget allocations to the national HRC to build its capacity, extend its outreach and promote human rights education – with an allocation of Le 1,5 billion in 2014 (Minister of Finance and Economic Development, 2013). 63.2 A Parliamentary Human Rights Committee has been established and received capacity building on national and international human rights instruments. It has been instrumental in supporting the development of laws complying with international and national obligations, such as the Child Rights Act, 2007 and the Persons with Disability Act, 2011. 63.3 The Office of the Ombudsman was established in 1997. It is an independent complaints agency which deals with cases of public maladministration. Its role includes advocacy for the rights of marginalized vulnerable groups. 64. There is no formal national system for the collection of statistics and data about the overall situation of children and realization of their respective rights. This impacts on the effectiveness of both monitoring and population based planning for children’s services and programmes in Sierra Leone. 65. Information management systems (IMS) have been developed and implemented by different ministries such as health, education and the MSWGCA. These are at different stages of development, but are generally not adequately advanced or sufficiently resourced or supported by capacitated personnel to provide routine, reliable, consistent and accurate information. 66. The most advanced IMS is in the health sector. The MoHS has, with the support of development partners, established a district-wide reporting system where child health information is routinely fed from facilities to the District Health Teams, which in turn feed the information to regional offices which is then centrally collected at a national level. In 2013 the system experienced a significant set- back when the MoHS was suspended and the data management department was disbanded. This means that information is currently being sourced directly from the district system’s administrative data. The MoHS is also currently in the process of rebuilding its systems. 67. Many of the systems are not electronic, but paper-based. For example, birth registration records are manually recorded and stored at decentralised Periphery Health Care Facilities, with no functioning system in place for centralised collection or analysis of the data. The registration application forms are meant to be sent from the primary health care facilities through the Primary Health Care monitoring and evaluation arm to the Regional offices. But in reality this doesn’t work, and regional data does not get 24  Government of the Republic of Sierra Leone Initial Report on the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child 2002-2014