General Comment No. 26 (GC26): a step forward for children’s participation in climate change

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Education, Environment, Human Rights

The climate crisis is changing the world as we know it. Even if children are the least responsible for the climate crisis, they are at the forefront of fighting against this crisis which is most than all a children’s rights crisis. With the publication of General Comment No. 26 (GC26), the United Nations Committee on the Rights of […]

Child labour in agriculture: a hazardous but common practice worldwide

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Exploitation, Labour

Worldwide, the majority of child labour (70 percent) is found in the agriculture sector (FAO, 2023). More specifically, today 112 million boys and girls are engaged in child labour in crop production, livestock, forestry, fisheries or aquaculture, which often involves working long hours and hazardous conditions. While many of the challenges can be traced back to root causes like poverty, […]

TikTok versus children’s privacy: pros and cons of the most popular app for teens 

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Digital Environment, Education, Empowerment, Exploitation

Recently TikTok has been fined £12.7m for illegally processing the data of 1.4 million children under 13 who were using its platform without parental consent. This is the latest step taken by public authorities against the most popular app, but many other states have adopted measures to limit its use to protect child and adult […]

Iceland’s investment in children’s future development and wellbeing

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Education, Empowerment, Human Rights

There is a large body of literature outlining arguments on why it is rational to invest in children. Many of these arguments are intuitively appealing or based on moralistic arguments, referring to human rights in general and children’s rights in particular. Other arguments provide summaries of fragmentary evidence on the impact of investments made in […]

Recommendation on Roma Youth Participation: a step forward for Roma children and youth

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Exploitation, Human Rights, Poverty

On 5 April 2023, the Committee of Ministers adopted a new Recommendation to the 46 Member States of the Council of Europe to ensure substantive participation, representation and inclusion of Roma youth in all spheres of society and decision-making processes, and well as to combat structural racism. This is an important step forward for Roma […]

The risks for children surfing the internet

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Digital Environment, Education, Empowerment, Exploitation

The internet has the potential to broaden horizons and ignite creativity the world over, but with these opportunities come serious risks: cyberbullying, emotional abuse, grooming, sexual abuse and exploitation are some of the major risks which children may encounter every day all over the world. Raising awareness on this issue and promoting tools to detect […]

Climate crisis is a children’s rights crisis

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Environment

The climate crisis is being addressed at the global, regional and national levels, through a wide range of high-level political commitments, treaties, resolutions, frameworks, policies and agreements. Despite all those initiatives and commitments, children are still left behind in policies and in mitigation and adaptation measures to address the climate crisis and the states’ failures to […]

How do US states measure up to children’s rights?

Posted on Posted in Child Marriage, Children's Rights, Education, Exploitation, Human Rights, Labour

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the most ratified international human rights treaty. Since its adoption in 1989, 196 countries have ratified the CRC, including Somalia and South Sudan which ratified it in 2015 (OHCRC, 2022). To date, the United States (US) is the only country in the world that hasn’t […]

Sex tourism in Morocco: a thriving industry against children’s rights

Posted on Posted in Children's Rights, Exploitation, Human Rights, Poverty, violence

Morocco is increasingly becoming a ‘paradise’ for paedophiles coming from all around the world. Given its easy accessibility to Europe, the large number of impoverished children and the taboo nature of this issue, Morocco is the perfect destination for sex tourism and child sexual exploitation. Moreover, the weak legal and law enforcement structures in implementing […]