Children’s Rights Skills and Knowledge Framework
The Framework provides a single point of access to new and existing resources and training on children’s rights and taking a children’s human rights approach.
UNICEF Child Rights Schools Toolkit – How to Include Rights-based Child Participation in Schools
This toolkit is for teachers and schools. It explains why a child rights approach to participation is important and how to facilitate it in schools.
How to do the CRWIAs The Right Way – A young people’s guide to doing Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessments
The Right Way is a project from SYP to support and challenge decision makers in Scotland to meaningfully engage young people in their work. How to do CRWIAs The Right Way is a young people’s guide to help decision makers create ambitious CRWIAs that champion and advance young people’s rights in Scotland.
IFRC Child Participation Toolkit
This toolkit is designed to support National Societies to enhance their ability to engage children in safe and meaningful ways to improve the relevance, quality, and effectiveness of programming.
Child participation in decision making: Implications for education and beyond
Child empowerment is on the policy agenda of education systems around the world, in particular since the increasing emphasis in policy and research discourse on supporting children’s participation rights. A large body of literature suggests that child participation in making decisions on matters that affect them is not only essential from a child rights perspective, but also that it is associated with several positive outcomes from the individual to societal level. In OECD countries there are many domains in which children can and do actively participate in making decisions, including regarding their education. This paper explores how and where children can participate in decision making, with a focus on policies and practices in OECD education systems. It outlines key considerations for child participation, including barriers that many systems are struggling to overcome.
Journal of Children and Media – There is no right age! The search for age appropriate ways to support children’s digital lives and rights
In a digital world, certain milestone birthdays define childhood experiences. The age of 13 is commonly dubbed “the age of digital consent” and embedded in the terms and conditions of social media platforms, although data protection regulation may set an older age limit for companies to profile children. For access to “adult” products and services such as pornography or gambling, 18 is the recognised age barrier. Three critical questions arise: (i) Are age limits the optimal way to regulate children’s digital experiences? (ii) Does such “bright line” regulation select the “right” age, according to evidence from the field of children and digital media? (iii) Does it matter that age limits are widely contested and often poorly implemented?
In this provocation, we acknowledge but also question calls from parents and politicians for researchers to determine the “right age” for children to get their first smartphone, access social media, or decide their online activities without parental monitoring. These calls are often expressed negatively – should society ban “under-age” children from various aspects of the digital world? Whether the focus is on access or restriction, these are calls for simple answers that lead to more, often problematic questions: Who should manage this and how? Is the “right age” for parents to determine, governments to put into law, or companies to decide according to their interests?
For many academics, these are the wrong questions – too reductive of the pros and cons of digital access, insensitive to the heterogeneity among children, naïve about the practical efficacy of bright-line rules or bans, and deaf to the voices of children and young people. Moreover, it is near impossible to channel the complex and uneven body of available evidence about children’s encounters with risks of harm towards a straightforward consensus regarding any “right age.” Researchers recognise the host of risk and protective factors shaping children’s digital lives, so researchers prefer to answer – it depends. Or, as danah boyd (2014) powerfully argued a decade ago, it’s complicated.
To navigate both academic commitments and public concerns, we deploy a children’s rights framework to evaluate milestone birthdays as they are applied to the digital environment and highlight emerging alternatives that seek to redesign digital policy and practice in age-appropriate and child-rights-respecting ways.
Children’s Rights in Brief #3 – Respect for the Views of the Child
The Ombudsman for Children’s Office (OCO) is an independent statutory body, which was established in 2004 under the Ombudsman for Children Act 2002 (2002 Act). Under the 2002 Act, as amended, the OCO has two core statutory functions:
to promote the rights and welfare of children up to 18 years of age; and
to examine and investigate complaints made by or for children about the administrative actions of public bodies, schools and voluntary hospitals that have, or may have, adversely affected a child.
This briefing is third in a series that the OCO is producing to raise awareness of children’s rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).1 We are creating this series in line with our duties:
to encourage public bodies to develop policies, practices and procedures designed to promote the rights and welfare of children (section 7(1)(b) of the 2002 Act); and
to collect and disseminate information on matters relating to children’s rights and welfare (section 7(1)(c) of the 2002 Act).
Children’s Rights in Brief #2 – The Best Interests of the Child
The Ombudsman for Children’s Office (OCO) is an independent statutory body, which was established in 2004 under the Ombudsman for Children Act 2002 (2002 Act). Under the 2002 Act, as amended, the OCO has two core statutory functions:
to promote the rights and welfare of children up to 18 years of age; and
to examine and investigate complaints made by or for children about the administrative actions of public bodies, schools and voluntary hospitals that have, or may have, adversely affected a child.
This briefing is second in a series that the OCO is producing to raise awareness of children’s rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).1 We are creating this series in line with our duties:
to encourage public bodies to develop policies, practices and procedures designed to promote the rights and welfare of children (section 7(1)(b) of the 2002 Act); and
to collect and disseminate information on matters relating to children’s rights and welfare (section 7(1)(c) of the 2002 Act).
Children’s Rights in Brief #1 – The UN Convention on the Right of the Child
The Ombudsman for Children’s Office (OCO) is an independent statutory body, which was established in 2004 under the Ombudsman for Children Act 2002 (2002 Act). Under the 2002 Act, as amended, the OCO has two core statutory functions:
to promote the rights and welfare of children up to 18 years of age; and
to examine and investigate complaints made by or for children about the administrative actions of public bodies, schools and voluntary hospitals that have, or may have, adversely affected a child.
This briefing is the first in a series that the OCO is producing to raise awareness of children’s rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). We are creating this series in line with our duties:
to encourage public bodies to develop policies, practices and procedures designed to promote the rights and welfare of children (section 7(1)(b) of the 2002 Act); and
to collect and disseminate information on matters relating to children’s rights and welfare (section 7(1)(c) of the 2002 Act).
How Parents can Enable a Toddler to Make Decisions at Storytime in the Home
How Parents can Enable a Toddler to Make Decisions at Storytime in the Home