A children's rights complaints mechanism at the UN has been a long time in the making. More than 20 years have passed since the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) entered into force, and almost every country in the world has now formally accepted its duty to respect and uphold children's international human rights. The body responsible for monitoring the Convention, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, was from the very beginning given the authority to review how countries met their children's rights obligations. Yet unlike under other UN human rights conventions, the Committee was powerless to provide child victims with redress when governments breached their rights.
There was, then, no international means for children to enforce their full range of rights, much less a forum designed to account for the unique difficulties that children face in bringing legal proceedings. Recognising this as a matter of discrimination, German NGO Kindernothilfe began in 2000 what would prove to be more than a decade of lobbying to expand access to justice for child victims of rights violations. Momentum gathered, and in 2007, a wider campaign was formed to demand that the UN establish a complaints mechanism under the CRC. Following an official launch of the campaign at the Human Rights Council, the Committee on the Rights of the Child formally endorsed the campaign in 2008.
The next spring, the UN agreed to take up the matter, and arranged a meeting to discuss the idea of a CRC complaints mechanism for that December. The plan to create a complaints mechanism was approved, and in September 2010, the first draft of an Optional Protocol to the CRC on a communications procedure was released. Governments from around the world debated the draft in December 2010 and February 2011, and the final revised text of the Optional Protocol to the CRC was published that May and adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in June. A committee of the UN General Assembly approved the new complaints mechanism in November, and it was adopted by the full General Assembly a few short weeks later. In February 2012, the new Optional Protocol was opened for signature and ratification, and by the end of the year had been signed by 34 States and ratified by 2.
The complaints mechanism entered into force with its tenth ratification in 2014. Although no complaints have been brought yet, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has issued the Rules of Procedure that govern how communications can be filed when children's rights have been violated. As such, the form and structure of the complaints mechanism are clear, and the time is right to consider how it can be used to advance children's rights. Along these lines, this toolkit is designed to give advocates a better sense of the new complaints mechanism in the hopes that they will be prepared and inspired to help children bring violations of their rights to international attention.