25 years of UNCRC: Lessons learned in children’s participation

Summary

This article is published in the Canadian Journal of Child Rights and is free to read online.

As we mark the 25th anniversary of the United National Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), it is timely to reflect on some of the achievements gained, lessons learned, and challenges ahead. Perhaps nowhere is this more important than in the field of children’s participation, a concept which has emerged, in large part, as a consequence of the inclusion of Article 12, and other associated civil rights in the CRC. Their inclusion afforded explicit recognition, for the first time in international law, that children are subjects of rights, entitled to active engagement in the realisation of those rights, in accordance with their evolving capacities. Although children were not excluded from the rights embodied in the International Covenants on both civil and political, and economic, social and cultural rights, these treaties were primarily addressed at adults. Indeed, they both specify that the rights they contain apply to ‘men and women’. While they do contain articles addressed to children in respect of education, health and social, economic and physical protection, the only civil rights included relate to the right to a name and nationality.

The innovation of the CRC was to acknowledge that the way in which children exercise their rights changes with age, but also that, in light of their lack of autonomy, active measures are needed to ensure that they are able to express their views on all matters of concern to them, and to have them taken seriously. In other words, Article 12 goes beyond freedom of expression, to place clear obligations on States to create the time, space and opportunity for children to be heard, and to take the necessary action in response to their views. This principle imposed a radical new set of demands on governments, professionals and civil society organisations, introducing an expectation that they work with and not simply for children.