"The Child Protection Index is designed to encourage regional cooperation, stimulate more robust implementation of the UNCRC, and serve as a policy analysis tool for civil society, governments and donors. The Index consists of 626 indicators that together measure a state’s policy and actions to protect and care for girls and boys under their jurisdiction. The Index framework of indicators heavily relies on the Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, published by UNICEF. The Handbook provides a series of yes, no and partially-implemented checklists to create an understanding of each UNCRC article’s significance. The Index uses these checklists as core indicators to measure state performance. The 2016 Index series is a pilot. Therefore, the Index scoring is based upon data available as of December 2013. This date ensured that all information was available across all nine countries and could be standardised over the last two years. However, to validate new efforts since 2014, the analysis and recommendations take these new actions into account to every extent possible".