This edited collection tells the story behind a ground-breaking Welsh law which reinforces the human rights of children and young people in Welsh devolved government, examines the impact of this law ...in selected policy areas and shows why the Welsh approach is attracting worldwide interest.
The dominant arrangement for governance in many States which are party to international human rights treaties is decentralisation. This puts implementation of human rights in the hands of ...institutions which are geographically closer to intended beneficiaries. Decentralisation to different levels of government introduces complexity, risk and opportunity to the governance of human rights. In response, UN Treaty Monitoring Bodies focus on State responsibility for implementation of human rights. The Committee on the Rights of the Child has emphasised the State as the coordinating body responsible for children's rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). In this paper, Wales is used as an example of a jurisdiction where decentralisation is a feature of children's rights, which has enabled a progressive approach to implementation. It explains the principled Children's Rights Approach which provides public authorities in Wales with a coherent framework to give effect to international children's rights policy planning and service delivery. As the contours of decentralisation in Wales are typical of arrangements in many States parties to the CRC, insights from Wales will be transferable to other jurisdictions. This experience is also relevant to other areas of human rights implementation in the context of decentralisation.
Child Protection and the echr O'Mahony, Conor
The International journal of children's rights,
11/2019, Volume:
27, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The European Court of Human Rights has generated a significant volume of case law that imposes demanding standards on States Parties to prevent, investigate and remedy ill-treatment of children at ...the hands of private actors. However, confusion and inconsistency is evident on a number of key points. Similar cases are decided on different grounds; and the approach to whether the right to an effective remedy under Article 13 has been violated is erratic. This creates uncertainty as to what is required of States to implement judgments, and makes it more difficult for similarly situated victims to vindicate their rights without bringing repetitive applications to Strasbourg. This article provides the first comprehensive treatment of Convention obligations to protect children from ill-treatment. It identifies problematic aspects of the case law, and proffers a more coherent body of principles that would provide greater clarity regarding what the echr requires of States Parties in the sphere of child protection, and regarding the measures of implementation required of States in cases where violations are found.
This paper presents a mapping of the Swedish children’s rights organizations (SCROs) and an analysis of how these organizations relate to public child welfare. SCROs represent a children’s rights ...discourse and are active as voice and service producers in the field of social work with vulnerable children. It can be presumed that SCROs affect public child welfare and by extension vulnerable children in need of support. This warrants a mapping of the SCROs and an examination of their organizational and professional space in regard to public child welfare. In total, 22 SCROs were found through internet searches (keywords e.g. ‘children’s rights’, ‘organization’, ‘association’ and ‘commitment’) and categorized based on a qualitative content analysis of the organizations’ websites. Seven SCROs operating on a domestic level are analysed in regard to their provided voice and service efforts. The findings suggest that there has been a growth in the number and activities of SCROs. Based on critical children’s rights studies and the concept of child rights governance, the ideological shift from child protection to children’s rights among these organizations is discussed. The rhetoric of SCROs implies a positioning of public child welfare as an ultimate duty bearer, while the organizations take on an expert role. Furthermore, SCROs appear to assume the role of child rights advocates. From a critical perspective, the children’s rights discourse brought forward by SCROs involves a juridification that risks to polarize the relation between children and public child welfare as well as undermining the legitimacy of public child welfare.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) has now been in place for over thirty years and is widely ratified. However, as the UNCRC is operationalised, a number of practical, conceptual ...and ethical issues have emerged . For example, questions arise concerning children's capacity and competence to make autonomous decisions, their involvement in dispute resolution and the relationship between the rights of children and those of their parents. Particular challenges arise in realising the rights of younger children and those with significant disabilities. The papers in this special edition explore these issues in relation to the UK and the wider international context, and also in different fields of social policy.
The South African jurisprudence on the rights of children is vibrant and generally progressive, and is supported by an enabling constitutional and statutory framework. The majority decision in Le ...Roux v Dey 2011 3 SA 274 (CC), however, ignores the rights of children, and this is in stark contrast to some of the minority judgments in the same case. This contrast is surprising, considering that all of the judges applied the same legal framework. With reference to an emerging interest in defining children's rights approaches to judging, this article critically analyses the majority and minority judgments, and establishes their vulnerabilities and strengths as children's rights judgments. In the process, suggestions are made in relation to defining a children's rights approach to judging.
The COVID-19 pandemic increased the likelihood of child maltreatment and made already difficult circumstances for children and their families much worse. This increased the significance of the child ...protection system's role in responding to child maltreatment and ensuring children's rights, including their right to a safe life without violence. Unfortunately, accumulating evidence has indicated that the rates of child maltreatment increased during the pandemic.
The current study sought to identify the gaps within child protection responses in various countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and to discover how we can respond to crises in the future while preserving children's rights, including their right to protection from maltreatment.
Five focus groups with a total of 47 professionals working with children from various countries were conducted via Zoom and analyzed using a thematic approach.
Three main themes were identified: 1) gaps in policies, 2) gaps in practice, and 3) professionals' messages to improve policy and practice.
This study emphasizes what was missed in child protection policy and practice, highlighting the continuous neglect of children's needs and voices within policies, practices and guidelines worldwide during the pandemic. Professionals' recommendations for policy and practice are also discussed.
COVID-19 significantly worsened already challenging circumstances for children and their families and globally increased the likelihood of child maltreatment. This risk heightened the urgency of ...child protection professionals in preventing child maltreatment and defending children's rights. The vast and growing body of research on protecting children from child maltreatment during COVID-19 has emphasized practitioners' tremendous difficulty in this arena.
The current international study sought to identify the experiences and responses of child protection professionals to child maltreatment during COVID-19.
Five real-time, virtual focus groups were conducted among professionals who work with children from countries around the globe.
Reflexive thematic analysis was employed to analyze the focus group transcripts.
The participants identified their experiences and challenges in performing their role of protecting children. Additionally, they shared context-adapted and innovative responses to child maltreatment, while emphasizing self-care and their mental health.
The results highlighted that child protection was significantly more challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, they underlined the importance of establishing practices and policies for child protection in crisis times as well as ensuring both children's and professionals' well-being and mental health.
Human beings as imperfect rational beings face continuous challenges, one of them has to do with the lack of recognizing and respecting our inner dignity in present times. In this collective paper, ...we address the overall theme—Philosophy of Education in a New Key (see Peters et al., 2020) from various perspectives related to dignity. We address in particular some of the constraints and possibilities with regard to this issue in various settings such as education and society at large. Klas Roth discusses, for example, that it is not uncommon that the value of human beings has to do with their price in, inter alia, their social, cultural, political and economic settings throughout the world. He argues that such a focus does not necessarily draw attention to the inner dignity of human beings, but that human beings ought to do so in education and society at large. Lia Mollvik discusses views of inner and outer dignity, and argues that there needs to be a balance in between them, and that the balance ought to be acknowledged in education. Rama Alshoufani discusses the classification of human beings in terms of various diagnoses related to the asserted dysfunction of the brain, and she argues that such classification does paradoxically not necessarily respect people with such diagnoses as ends in themselves. On the contrary, she argues that their inner dignity is not respected, but that it should be. Other such failures are due to the lack of inner dignity when it comes to Children’s rights as discussed by Rebecca Adami, and to the lack of recognition of human beings’ vulnerability as discussed by Katy Dineen. Fariba Majlesi criticizes a too strong emphasis on substantive notions of humanist education, which seem to hinder new ways of thinking; she argues that it is necessary to acknowledge the latter in and through education in order to preserve the dignity of human beings. Dignity, it is argued throughout the paper, has an inner moral worth, and is beyond price.
This article presents a tentative analysis of 30 years of academic research in the field of children's rights and migration (1989-2019). Much research has addressed the plight of unaccompanied, ...refugee and asylum-seeking children, trying better to link children's rights considerations with international refugee law. Many publications address the best interests of the child principle and the right to be heard. Most research focuses on (migration towards) Europe. This has led to an increased visibility and recognition of children's rights in the context of migration.
However, there are still various blind spots in the research reviewed. Most research focuses on some children, but not all (e.g., accompanied children), on some rights, but not all (e.g., economic, social and cultural rights), and on some types of migration, but not all (e.g., economic migration). Moreover, refugee and migrant children tend to be studied as a group, which risks reducing attention for their internal diversity.
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