Submitted by ssaliba on
While civil and political rights are recognised specifically for children in the CRC, the review by the Human Rights Committee (the Committee) of State obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides a strong platform to further elaborate children’s civil and political rights. Indeed, given the mandate of the Committee to clarify and interpret the content of civil and political rights, this treaty body offers a complementary and essential perspective on the scope and meaning of those rights for certain categories of individuals, particularly children.
In this context, in 2011, CRIN launched the Children’s Rights Wiki (the Wiki), an online tool which brings together all information about children’s rights country by country, as part of our efforts to draw attention to all violations of children’s rights globally. The Wiki includes extracts of recommendations issued by UN human rights mechanisms, such as UN special procedures and treaty bodies, including the Human Rights Committee, highlighting violations of children’s rights.
The aim is to draw a clear picture of persistent violations of children’s rights in a given country, as raised by the UN human rights mechanisms, with the eventual goal of matching them with avenues of redress. Equally, the extracts reveal gaps in reporting on certain violations of children’s rights by civil society.
This analysis of children’s rights in the concluding observations and general comments of the Committee looks at how the Covenant is interpreted for children by the Committee, focusing on the most frequently raised violations as well as those that are rarely - if ever - addressed.
The aim is twofold: we hope to encourage the Committee to address all children’s rights and to help advocates strengthen their reporting on children’s rights issues.
The analysis is evolving, rather than comprehensive, and is meant as a starting point for others to take on. We welcome comments at [email protected].
