Civil society organisations have slammed the South African government for broken systems which are failing to deal with problems affecting children. The report presented to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCROC) by more than 40 organisations criticises government for being "extremely delayed" in submitting country reports on the status of children. Government only submitted the reports for the years 2003,2008 and 2013 in the beginning of this year.Both government and civil society must each submit reports to the UN.Organisations, which include the University of Cape Town's Children's Institute, Centre for Child Law and Childline, are urging government to comply with their obligations and address challenges affecting children.The challenges pinpointed in the report include:High levels of corruptionAbsence of a framework for monitoring children's rightsHigh levels of violence against childrenFailures in child protection, child justice and education, andInequitable access to health."Overall, political leadership for realising children’s rights is extremely poor, and the policy for interdepartmental cooperation is poorly implemented," the report said.Government is also not spending enough on children. "Significantly, this lack of political will leads to weak prioritisation of expenditure and resources to realise children’s rights," the report said.Samantha Waterhouse, from the University of the Western Cape’s Dullah Omar Institute, said: "There was a big political push for SA to have a legal robust framework in place but then on the other hand you see very weak political leadership to implement this framework. Children are not part of the story. There has been nothing to provide an official government space to give leadership on children's rights."Ann Skelton from the Centre for Child Law said that while government had made great progress in law reform it had to strengthen systems to deal with failures in child protection, education and violence.The possibility of the Children's Ombud and the appointment of a dedicated Children’s Rights Commissioner to the Human Rights Commission (HRC), is also discussed in the report but organisations said that they will consult on this before making a decision.Both civil society and government will be invited to the UN next year to explain their reports...