Children’s rights-based participation in advocacy

Professor Laura Lundy and Dr Chelsea Marshall

Centre for Children’s RightsQueen’s University, Belfast

www.qub.ac.uk/ccr

The Centre for Children’s Rights:Who we are and what we do

Implementing Children’s Rights - using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and other relevant international human rights standards to evaluate the laws, policies and practices which affect children.

Research with Children - evaluating and using the best methods of conducting research into children’s lives with a particular focus on approaches which involve children actively in the process.

Training and education on children’s rights – providing high quality training and education programmes at Masters and Doctoral level. We have a new Masters in Children’s Rights and are developing open access on-line training on the UNCRC.

Overview

• Why do we need to involve children and young people in advocacy?

• What are the key features of child rights-based participation as they relate to advocacy?

• A good example of children participating in advocacy.

• What matters to children and young people themselves?

Why should children and young people be involved in advocacy for their rights?

It is core to a ‘rights-based’ approach

Activity should further the realisation of human/children’s rights

Human/children’s rights standards should guide all phases of activity

The activity should contribute to the development of the capacities of the duty-bearers to meet their obligations and of the rights-holders to claim their rights

UN Statement of Common Understanding on a

Human Rights-Based Approach (The Stamford Agreement)

They are entitled to be involved

States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming

his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with

the age and maturity of the child

(Article 12, UNCRC)

It supports the realisation of their other rights

More relevantclaims

Better informed decisions

Increased accountability

of duty-bearers

The key features of children’s rights-based participation

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 12. (2009)

• Transparent and informative• Voluntary• Respectful• Relevant• Facilitated with child-friendly working methods.• Inclusive• Supported by training• Safe and sensitive to risk.• Accountable.

(for advice on implementation see: Gerison Lansdown (2011), The Child’s Right to be Heard, UNICEF and Save the Children.

SPACESafe and inclusive

opportunity to form and express

a view

VOICEFacilitated to

express views freely in medium of

choice

AUDIENCEThe view must be

listened to

INFLUENCEThe view must be

acted upon

The right to express

views

The right to have views given due weight

ARTICLE 12

Voice is not enough…Lundy (2007)

A good example of children’s rights-based advocacy

Advancing Children’s Rights• 2013/2014 Project funded by Atlantic Philanthropies

• Collaboration between the Centre for Children’s Rights at Queen’s University, Belfast and Child Law Clinic, University College Cork

• Capturing the learning in relation to children’s rights advocacy of 18 organisations working in Ireland, North and South through interviews with Directors, Staff and children and young people involved in advocacy.

• Further information available on www.advancingchildrensrights.com

Children and Youth Led Advocacy on the adequacy of school counselling services

Young people from Children’s Law Centre, (NI)

• Child-led topic: Chose the issue that they wanted to work on.

• Peer research: survey with over 1000 young people.

• Child-friendly dissemination: presented the findings in drama and a child-friendly written report

• Engaged directly with duty-bearers: direct dialogue with the Head of Service and Minister for Education.

What matters to children and young people themselves in terms of their participation in advocacy?

Group Session 1: Advocacy with children who do not communicate in ‘typical’ ways.

• Children with physical disabilities• Children who speak a minority language• Children with learning disabilities • Children who are averse to social interaction• The very young• Others?

Children with learning difficulties

• Ask children themselves about their preferred way of communicating.

• If this isn’t possible, take advice from those who know best- their teachers, parents or carers.

The ‘banana’ bus

“We are embarrassed on that bus…We hide under the seats”

The very young

The Committee on the Rights of the Child has observed that younger children: ‘make choices and communicate their feelings, ideas and wishes in numerous ways, long before they are able to communicate through the conventions of spoken or written language’

GC7, 2005, para. 11

Group work: session 1. • In small groups, imagine that you have been asked to consult with

children aged 4-5, in socially disadvantaged areas

• You want to find out what things they find hard in the first year of kindergarten in order to advocate for an after-school programme which helps them settle into school.

• Note: these children cannot read; most cannot count; and not all will want to draw pictures. Resources are unlimited.

Taking advice from children.

Children’s advisory groups are one way of involving children in all stages of the process.

In a project for Barnardo’s NI, we worked with an advisory group of four children aged 4-5 who advised at all stages:

• Questions to be asked.• Methods to be used.• Interpretation of findings.• Dissemination of results.

Choosing the items for the picture survey

Engagement in the choice of methods

• The CRAG suggested that “circle time” would be a good way of finding out other children’s views.

• Their choice counteracted some of the recognised disadvantages of group interviews

Engagement in the interpretation of the data

Engagement in dissemination

Group work: session 2.

Scaling up:

How to involve larger numbers of children and

young people.

Why?

• More inclusive

• More persuasive

How?

• Public campaigns

• Surveys

• Social media

How can children lead or be meaningfully involved in these?

Child-led campaigns

Surveys

• Advantage: Most obvious to include greater numbers and be able to generalise.

• Disadvantage: often needs technical expertise in question-writing and analysis that can be outside the capacity of staff and children.

• Worth checking out free on-line questionnaires such as Survey Monkey.

• May be off-putting for children to do … but the way to try and address this obvious…

Involving children in survey design

Providing space to express views freely

Encouraging fuller responsesParticipant responses in ‘free response’ boxes were noticeably more extensive and detailed: participants wrote an average of 15 words in their responses compared to an average of 6.4 words when other children’s views not provided.

• ‘i would assess science by doing a project and getting marks on that and maybe have a small test after. The project could be like a rivision thing but better and funner’.

• ‘I would let the children bring their own experiments into the classroom and explain how to do them. I would encourage them to research new ideas to make it enjoyable and interesting’

• ‘I would ask the class how they would like to do it’

Social media

Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiHp4Zlb9mg

Thunderclap via Twitter

• What was one of the most successful Twitter campaigns in 2013?

• … beating Dove Natural Beauty?!

UNICEF INDIA

The #AWAAZDO hashtag received 1,525 mentions and the @UNICEFIndia Twitter account gained over 2000 followers. The campaign itself also received 60,540 impressions on Twitter, as it was calculated using Tweetreach. By the end of the campaign, the Awaaz Do website also got 203,248 signups of people interested in joining a good cause.

Group-work activity 2.

Good Fast

Cheap

Choose TWO!

Reducing the voting age to 16 – involving as many children as you can.

• Group 1. Good and fast and not cheap. There is a 12 week consultation period on proposed legislation. Budget is not an issue.

• Group 2. Good and cheap but slow. There is no proposal to do this in government but the young people you work with want to work on this issue. You have very little money but time is not an issue.

• Group 3. Good and fast and cheap. Like group 1 –except you have no money!

• Group 4. Cheap, fast and not good. Like group 3 except bad.

Session 3. Including marginalised children

• Who are they in your communities?

• Who works with and for them?

• Do they have “consultation fatigue?”

• What can be done to support their right to participate?

Session 4: Having impact

What are the best ways of ensuring that duty-bearers take children’s views seriously and act

upon them?

Getting an upfront commitment

41

Face to Face contact• In the past year for example I can think of conversations I’ve had

with children and young people and they weren’t like [consultation events]. They were proper business meetings where we sat down and talked very seriously about their situations and in those meetings I got to hear probably some of the most salient pieces of information about policy-making that I needed to... (Government representative)

•

• … to have the Education Minister there as well was brilliant and to get his immediate feedback – just the presentation and then he was on the spot... (Young person)

•

Group activity 4

Share some examples of practices that you think were effective or ineffective in ensuring that duty-bearers responded to children’s rights advocacy.

What makes duty-bearers not just listen but act?