CRINmail 1467
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LAUNCH OF GLOBAL REPORT ON ACCESS TO JUSTICE FOR CHILDREN
Every country in the world has been ranked on how effectively children can use the law to challenge violations of their rights, in what is the first-ever global study on children’s access to justice, conducted by Child Rights International Network (CRIN).
The new report, ‘Rights, Remedies and Representation’, provides a snapshot of how countries compare when it comes to ensuring that every child rights violation has a remedy. The research takes into account whether children can bring lawsuits when their rights are violated, the legal resources available to them, the practical considerations for taking legal action, and whether judges apply international law on children’s rights in their rulings. The global study condenses findings from 197 country reports, researched with the support of hundreds of lawyers and NGOs.
Today’s CRINmail sets out the findings of this global research and how to use them.
Why access to justice?
Access to justice is a human right, but it is also what makes other rights a reality. For human rights to be more than a promise, there must be a way for those rights to be enforced, including through redress when rights are violated. Yet while the importance of access to justice applies equally to children and adults, children’s rights in this area, and the obstacles they face, have long been neglected.
CRIN’s director Veronica Yates said: “When we think of children and justice, the first image that comes to people’s minds is usually one of children breaking the law. Rarely do we consider children and their right to use the legal system to protect their human rights or to seek redress when their rights have been violated. [But] like adults, [children] have human rights and when these rights are infringed they should be able to trust and use the legal system to get justice.”
Obstacles to accessing justice that specifically affect children include time limitations on initiating legal action which can be unduly restrictive, including in cases of child sex abuse where survivors can take an indefinite amount of years to report the abuse. Children’s lack of full legal standing in most countries also means they are generally prevented by law from bringing court cases by themselves and in their own names. What’s more, parental consent is usually required before proceedings can be brought in the first place, representing an added obstacle for child victims of family violence.
Ranking the world
Alongside the report we have launched a global ranking of every country. The top of the list is dominated by Western Europe, while the countries that score worst are those governed by authoritarian regimes or where the legal system is so underdeveloped that it fails to be an effective means of protecting children’s rights.
Belgium, Portugal and Spain occupy the top three positions, with Kenya the only country outside Europe to make the top ten. Relegated to the bottom of the pile are Palestine, Eritrea and Equatorial Guinea. But despite the numbers, what the figures also show is that no country on earth perfectly protects children’s access to justice, and that all countries could learn a great deal from each other.
For details on how countries were ranked, read about the methodology we used.
The legal status of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
Although every State has ratified the Convention on the Right of the Child - with the exception of the United States - only 94 countries have fully incorporated the Convention’s standards into national law. Just under half of all countries allow the Convention to be directly enforced in courts, which enables children to challenge laws or practices that violate their rights under the CRC. The countries of the Commonwealth have been reluctant to adopt this practice, limiting the CRC to a tool used to interpret national legislation and denying children its full protection. And while CRIN’s research found evidence of the Convention being cited in 60 percent of countries, in only 20 countries was the use of the CRC frequent and consistent enough to amount to an established jurisprudence.
The legal status of the child
The legal status of the child refers to how the law treats children involved in legal proceedings. While States almost universally recognise the right of children to bring a case in their own name - a basic standard that recognises that children are legal persons with their own interests - the ability of children to engage with the legal system is severely hampered around the world.
Rigid minimum ages and restrictive parental consent rules are common, making children’s ability to bring a lawsuit often dependent on parents’ permission and disposition. Several countries in Southeast Asia even have rules preventing children from bringing complaints against their parents, a practice that risks promoting impunity for abuses of children within the family. Only 14 States explicitly require that a child’s representative, whoever that may be, act in the best interests of the child. Meanwhile children’s right to be heard in legal proceedings - an integral part of ensuring access to justice for children - is not recognised in 58 countries, while 84 others enshrine the standard in more limited circumstances.
Remedies
For children’s rights to have meaning, they must have access to all courts and complaints mechanisms to enforce their rights and seek remedies when rights violations occur. This project particularly examined the development of collective litigation and public interest litigation across the world as an effective - yet underdeveloped - way of challenging widespread violations of children’s rights. Despite the opportunity these measures present, less than half of States allow collective litigation in some settings, and just 15 percent allow collective action across the board.
Child focused NGOs will often be well placed to challenge widespread violations of children’s rights or simply to support an individual child seeking redress. Yet procedures that enable organisations to do so are far from universal: around half of States permit NGOs to bring cases in their own name, while a slightly larger majority of 54 percent allow NGOs the more limited power to intervene in cases that have already been filed. The project also traced the rise in government control over NGOs' ability to take these actions - a system that risks barring access to justice along political lines.
Practicalities
Many of the most serious barriers to children accessing justice lie in the practicalities. The financial burden of seeking legal advice, intimidating courtrooms and baffling legal procedures can be difficult to overcome for many adults, but they can become an impenetrable barrier for children seeking justice.
Fully functioning state-funded legal aid systems are completely absent from 42 countries worldwide, and pro-bono services - that is, free and voluntary legal services - is increasingly resorted to to fill this gap. Strict time limits on how soon or until when a case can be brought to the courts also remain a significant barrier to children accessing justice. Procedural obstacles often prevent children from meaningfully participating in judicial proceedings and proving their case, with almost a quarter of all States failing to meet the most basic requirement of allowing all children to give evidence. Meanwhile almost three quarters of countries have adopted some kind of legislation preventing the publication of information about children involved in the justice system in order to prevent revictimising those seeking redress and stigmatising those accused of criminal offences - yet these protections vary widely in quality.
Next steps and key players
Despite the grim picture painted by the report, it sets the scene for collective action towards pressing for reform to improve access to justice for children worldwide. We hope this project will guide governments on how to improve children’s access to courts and other complaints mechanisms to enforce their rights, and encourage the UN and regional bodies to address children’s access to justice in a more systematic way throughout their work. We hope it will inspire NGOs and children’s advocates to consider stronger and more strategic forms of advocacy, and encourage lawyers to assist children and their representatives with seeking redress through the legal system.
Further information:
JARGON OF THE WEEK
Latin may be considered a 'dead' language, but it's very much alive in the world of courtrooms. And it's probably a good thing that it be confined there because, with words like habeas corpus, locus standi and amicus curiae, we'd end up wearing away our brains with so much head scratching. In fact, legal jargon in any language will have the same effect.
So, in wanting to keep our readers' brains intact, we've put together a jargon buster to accompany our global report, which gives short, plain language explanations of the occasionally intimidating word.
Happy reading!
The CRIN team
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