In this issue:
New CRIN report: What Lies Beneath
What Lies Beneath
As NGOs, how often do we question whether what we’re doing is what we ought to be doing? In other words, is our work needed and necessary? We recently asked ourselves this at CRIN, and we wrote a new report about it.
In our attempt to answer the question, we worked out that our role as NGOs, and in particular as CRIN, has been to complain about what’s wrong with the world, fuelling people’s despair about the lack of respect for or recognition of children as rights holders, without changing things for the better. But this has to change, otherwise we will come to struggle to justify our existence.
So under a new vision, rooted in idealism and self-criticism, we’re realigning how we work. As a preview, we’ve resolved that rather than just repeating what it is we’re fighting against, we want to better define what it is we’re fighting for. With this report, we start by answering a simple question: if we could change one thing to make a perfect, rights-respecting world, what would it be?
You can download the report here.
THE LAST WORD
"Forget it. Get real. It will never happen. If your goal is the full realisation of children’s rights - in any country or on any issue - you’ve heard this refrain before. Perfection is a tough standard to meet, and setting a goal based on what seems realistic rather than principled can have a seductive allure. Yet a trap lies in caving in to pragmatism and chasing short-term goals: if we lose sight of the ultimate change we want to see, how can we ensure our pragmatic steps will get us there?"
-- Excerpt from CRIN's latest report, What Lies Beneath.
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