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Summary: Dr. Philip Cook, 46, is founder of the International Institute for Child Rights and Development at the Centre for Global Studies, University of Victoria, Canada. He has a Ph.D. in cross-cultural psychology from Queen's University. Dr. Cook heads up several local and international projects focusing on building capacity to decrease children's vulnerability and has written extensively on the implementation of children's rights in the context of culture and development. He is the father of three children and lives on Pender Island, Canada.
Our problem in the child rights community is that sometimes we are too issue driven. The question we need to ask is how do we mainstream child rights and push the CRC deeper into civil society?
We can take lessons from how women’s organisations have done this and been successful. It is important that there is more focus on systematic change. Most approaches look at child rights gaps, but we believe it is important to look at strengths too, including children as assets themselves.
My advice to child rights NGOs and activists would be to be strategic about alliances. There is still a lot of in-fighting in the child rights community. There are too few partnerships with, for example, the private sector, and even the media.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child has definitely made a difference. There is near universality for a start. There is a universal language with regard to childhood - it is embedded in societies around the world.
We need to be very careful about not being normative, in other words thinking there is only one way to approach the CRC. We need to appreciate the complexities of childhood and understanding childhood in its different contexts and that the CRC need to be applied in all contexts so the CRC can be applied.
Which child rights advocate do I admire? Cindy Kiro, New Zealand’s Commissioner for Children. I admire how she has been strategic and also what she has done for indigenous children, although that is not the only thing her work has been about.
If I was not working in child rights, I’d probably still be looking at the changing nature of culture and human well being.
The best thing about my job is that I get to work with some fantastic people who are motivated, inspiring, young and old. The worst is that sometimes it is difficult to balance my work with family life.
If I was not doing this interview, I would be working on indigenous issues in Northern Canada.
Sum up child rights in one word? Today