(edited by Dr Naomi Lott, University of Oxford)
To mark World Children’s Day, some of our members chose to shine a spotlight on some key issues and current debates in children’s rights. This blog posts provides comments on issues ranging from anti-child rights movements and conspiracy theories to environmental rights, business, incorporation, human rights education and disability. It offers reflections on matters affecting children on a global level, as well as those domestically to the UK. These reflections arise from academic research, advocacy, and experience, and are offered by early career researchers and other stakeholders working in the field of children’s rights. It is clear that, on this World Children’s Day, challenges to children’s rights enjoyment materialise from both historical, ongoing issues, and novel, emerging issues. Those seeking to support children and their rights must reflect on how best to utilise the tools at our disposal to counter such challenges.
‘Anti-Child Rights Movements’, Dr Ally Dunhill (Head of Advocacy, Eurochild)
Anti-rights groups are non-state groups that position themselves as part of civil society but attack fundamental and universal human rights. They typically campaign against the rights of marginalised groups – women, children and young people, LGBTQI+ people, religious minorities, ethnic and racial minorities, migrants and refugees. Consequently, civil society that defends the rights of those groups comes under attack as well. As a result, anti-rights groups directly impact people’s lives and civic space.
Eurochild, its members and other children’s rights organisations have voiced concerns about anti-child rights movements in several European countries (CIVICUS, 2019). Nonetheless, these movements have gained significant support, using social media to amplify their messages spreading misinformation and ‘fake news’. Eurochild is continually advocating for institutions with respective mandates on human rights, including children’s rights, including the European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe (CoE) to work together to address this growing challenge (Eurochild, 2022).
Disinformation campaigns, such as the QAnon conspiracy theory, originating in the US and famous for spreading fake news on child trafficking, are gaining ground in Europe (Politico, 2021).
There is currently no specific mechanism to monitor and counteract anti-child rights movements in Europe and their harmful rhetoric and actions. Eurochild is calling for such a mechanism to:
Monitor and document anti-child rights discourse and actions at the European level;
Sound the alert on activities that threaten children’s rights work and those working in defence of children’s rights, including child human rights defenders;
Provide a platform (a safe space) for children’s rights organisations and defenders to share experiences and evidence of anti-child rights activities they face and possible ways to counteract them;
Support organisations and individuals at risk from anti-child rights movements. This could include signposting to other organisations that support individuals at risk and publicly denouncing anti-child rights rhetoric or actions;
Support collaboration between European institutions and UN human rights bodies to counteract misinformation and attacks from anti-child rights movements;
Promote collaboration and sharing of information and expertise between those working on children’s rights, including child human rights defenders, and other human rights actors (e.g. organisations working on women’s rights, disability rights, refugees and migrants’ rights, LGBTQI+ rights).
‘Environmental Rights and Children’s Rights’, Dr Fiona MacDonald (Lecturer in Law, Open University)
This year, World Children’s Day falls only 2 days after the close of ‘COP27’, the world leaders’ climate implementation summit where António Guterres warned that the world is ‘on a highway to climate hell’.
While it is hard not to watch on fearing that much of what is spouted at the summit is hot air about ‘hot air’ from politicians, what is clear is that much of the world is waking up to the climate disaster upon us. Climate change and environmental issues are children’s rights issues. They intersect directly with the right to life, the right to health, the right to leisure to name but a few. Climate change has also been shown to exacerbate inequality which is likely to impact already vulnerable children disproportionately (A/HRC/41/39).
Notwithstanding that there are only references in two convention articles to environmental health and none to climate change, due in part to the age of the Convention, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child have increasingly focused on and drawn attention to environmental issues and to climate change as a children’s rights issue. In December 2021 they launched the ‘Draft General Comment No. 26 on children’s rights and the environment with a special focus on climate change’ and started the consultations process. The inclusion of environmental issues and climate change as a focus for a General Comment must not be undervalued. It is an important step in the right direction to have the Committee recognising the importance of the issues for children’s rights to the extent that a General Comment is necessary. This is a critical opportunity for the Committee to take a clear stance on these issues, and echo the understanding of the UN generally that ‘climate change is the defining issue of our time and now is the defining moment to do something about it’ (UN Website).
The Committee on the Rights of the Child is not alone within the UN in increasing its focus on environmental rights. In June of this year the UN General Assembly declared access to a clean and healthy environment a universal right. Of the 169 State parties voting, none voted against and only 8 abstained (UN Website News). Up until relatively recently, environmental rights may not have received a significant focus from the Committee. Clearly this is changing, and it can be expected that these issues will be an increasingly prevalent topic of comment in the future.
Current generations inherited the earth, damaged and dying. We have a duty to do our best to hand over to the next generation a world in recovery. Rights will not matter if there is not a world that can support human life.
‘Children and the Business Community’, Rhian Thomas-Turner (R&D Lead, Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital for Wales)
Globally the business community make strategic decisions that have a wide-ranging impact on society. Due to the international nature of business operations of many public companies, those decisions impact children across numerous borders and across the sphere of the human rights of children.
Whilst the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) binds State Parties who have ratified the Convention, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, in 2013 recognised the impact the business sector has on children’s rights. Whilst the business community has the potential to support the realisation of the rights of children, the Committee also recognised that ‘the realization of children’s rights is not an automatic consequence of economic growth and business enterprises can also negatively impact children’s rights’ (General Comment 16). Decisions made by companies impact on a child’s physical environment, including housing, access to clean water, space to play and the longer-term impact of climate change which ‘adversely affects the life trajectory of children more than adults’ (Committee on the Rights of the Child).
Strategic decisions made by the pharmaceutical sector on which drugs to test and bring to market has an impact on a child’s ability to access medicines for their conditions. This decision impacts on numerous rights contained under the UNCRC including Article 6, the Right to Life, Survival and Development, and Article 24, the Right to Health, as well as the Right to Benefit to Scientific Advancement under Article 15(1)(b) of the International Covenant of Economic, Cultural and Social Rights.
State Parties have an obligation regarding the impact of business operations on the human rights of children, including the recognition of the child as a stakeholder of those companies as ‘business consumers…and members of the communities and the environments in which the business operates’ (General Comment 16).
In the UK there is a movement towards a change to the Companies Act 2006 to require companies to think past its impact on shareholders and consider the implications of its actions on wider stakeholders (Better Business Act). The question is whether such a change in legislation would aid both the UK Government and the business community to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of children.
‘Children and Disability: A Pandemic Reflection’, Dr Seamus Byrne (Senior Lecturer in Law, Leeks Beckett University)
Without doubt, the Covid-19 pandemic underlined and exacerbated the precarious position of some of society’s most vulnerable children. That this was especially true for children with disabilities is beyond doubt. Save the Children International estimated that prior to the advent of Covid-19, only 10% of children with disabilities were in school worldwide. Following the onset of the pandemic, research by UNICEF involving 24 countries globally found that in at least half of those countries, governments had failed to adopt measures to enable the continued learning for those with disabilities. Indeed, evidence from the COVID-19 Disability Rights Monitor (COVID-DRM), an investigation supported by seven leading international disability rights organisations which heard evidence from over 2, 000 respondents from across 134 countries, painted a devastating picture of the impact which Covid-19 had on children with disabilities. This included the failure of governments to take appropriate steps to protect the rights of children with disabilities, for those either in the community or within an institutional setting. Further evidence indicated an urban/rural divide in the level of provision that was afforded to children with disabilities, while girls with disabilities were found to be disproportionally impacted by Covid-19, thereby highlighting the intersectional nature of the discrimination that children with disabilities routinely, and often quietly, face.
However, perhaps more worryingly, and evidenced across the voluminous literature on the impact which Covid-19 had on children with disabilities, is the inescapable realisation that such children and young people were especially vulnerable to state sanctioned rights-transgressing and violative conduct, largely on account of their disability. Drilling down deeper into this realisation, questions arise as to the ability of the existing rights-based frameworks - especially those under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - to exert the fullness of their substantive and procedural traction to ensure that the rights of children and young people with disabilities are foregrounded within governmental decision-making processes. With international efforts now largely coalescing around the nebulous ‘building back better’ mantra in an effort to mitigate the adverse impact which Covid-19 has exerted nationally, regionally, and internationally, it is imperative, now more than ever, that the rights-based protections for children and young people with disabilities, which were so unapologetically disregarded during the initial responses to Covid-19, are now firmly and squarely brought within the confines of governmental planning and recovery processes.
‘Children’s Rights in Scotland’, Dr Tracy Kirk (Lecturer in Child and Family Law, University of Stirling)
The incorporation of the UNCRC into Scots law has been a long-held commitment of the Scottish Government. Pitched as a ‘maximalist approach’ which would ensure the ‘gold standard’ for children, the UNCRC Incorporation Scotland Bill sought to provide ‘a revolution in children’s rights’. However, despite the best efforts of children, young people, and their allies, this reality has yet to be realised.
In March 2021, prior to the final debate in the Scottish Parliament, UK Scottish Secretary Alister Jack wrote to Deputy First Minister John Swinney to warn that certain provisions in the Incorporation bill placed obligations on the UK Government, thus they were beyond the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament and should be amended accordingly. Unfortunately, this advice was not heeded nor shared with the Scottish Parliament. Therefore, despite the unanimous passing of the Bill, a subsequent ruling in the Supreme Court in October 2021 required the Scottish Government to amend the Bill.
Publicly, the narrative has tended to focus on the Scottish Government seeking to promote, protect and fulfil the rights of children in Scotland, but being prevented from doing so by the UK Government who are seeking to dilute the effect of the Incorporation Bill. In reality, it has been 19 months since the Scottish Government were warned that the Incorporation Bill needed to be amended, and 13 months since the Supreme Court Judgment there is still a lack of clarity and urgency on the part of the Scottish Government.
At a time when the UK Government are moving ahead with a Bill of Rights that will remove human rights protections, it is surely time for the Scottish Government to expedite the reintroduction of the UNCRC Incorporation Bill. The Scottish Government can no longer continue to rely upon their commitment to children’s rights while failing to make use of the existing powers they have to protect, respect and fulfil the rights of children in Scotland. Scotland need to start achieving international minimum standards before they can credibly aim to be the best place in the world for a child to grow up.
After all, the UNCRC is a floor, not a ceiling!
Children’s Human Rights Education in Early Childhood: “Don’t be scared”, Carmel Ward (Queen’s University Belfast)
Children’s right to education about, through and for rights is enshrined in Article 29 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which can be viewed as the foundation of human rights education. This right is reaffirmed in Article 11 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child . However, across the world, children in their early years do not enjoy human rights education. This is a continuing challenge evident through the lacuna of early childhood guidance, curricula and research. In practice the reluctance to implement children’s rights education is generally grounded in beliefs that young children are incapable of learning about abstract rights. My own research in Rwanda illustrated how adults’ fears of teaching children about rights manifested from the ‘unknowns’ or misunderstandings of the legal provisions in the Convention and Charter. On the other hand, young children expressed happiness with the idea and many “want to keep learning” about rights.
A generalisation of resistance to human rights has been constructed about ‘African’ contexts (from the perspective of adults) yet there has been little attention given to beliefs and lived realities that synergise with children’s rights education. This gap reflects the increasing calls for counter narratives against the continuing disproportionate focus on the challenges or deficits in ‘African’ childhoods and inattention to exploring the diversity of experiences or possibilities for children living on the continent. The failure to recognise possibilities reduces the potential for implementing children’s rights education. If effective implementation is dependent upon adults who are not fearful of children’s rights, then a good starting place is opening up a dialogical ‘third space’ within communities to understand existing knowledges and beliefs. A space that allows points of synergy or resistance to emerge and provides opportunities for renegotiation in order to alleviate fears and harmonise universal rights with lived realties; a suggestion also made by scholars seeking the cultural legitimacy of rights in ‘African’ contexts. Bringing children’s perspectives into these spaces so adults can see and hear children’s ideas can contribute to articulating human rights education in ways that can demystify misunderstandings and discontinue fears whilst also providing insights into children’s capabilities of learning about rights. Children appear convinced that “rights are good” so perhaps we just need to reassure adults by telling them “Don’t be scared” of education about, through and for rights in early childhood spaces.