Enabling children to speak up when their rights are violated
A World Vision staff member has been a significant motivator in giving children the ability to appeal to the United Nations if their rights have been violated.
Sara Austin, director, President’s Office – WV Canada, was critical in establishing a new optional protocol for a complaints procedure to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), giving children the ability to appeal to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child if their rights have been violated. This protocol has been adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.
Until recently, children were the only human rights group that lacked a complaints procedure – all other human rights treaties had such a mechanism to appeal to when violations occurred.
“As an organisation that works directly with children in some of the most difficult places around the world, we often witness violations of children’s’ rights,” said Ms Austin. “The new complaint procedure will create a new advocacy tool which World Vision and others can use to hold governments accountable to their promises to children,” she added. Ms Austin also serves as co-chair of the global campaign group for the optional protocol.
Children can appeal to the United Nations (UN) Committee only when they demonstrate that they have first tried to resolve the issue in their home country, and did not receive an adequate or just response. For example, if a violation of rights has happened, and this issue was not resolved either through local mechanisms such as the local justice system or national children's ombudspersons [representatives], then the children have a right to appeal.
For World Vision this means:
- Lobbying national governments to ratify the optional protocol
- Using the optional protocol to hold government to account for their promises to children
- Raising awareness among children and youth that we work with to understand how the complaints mechanism works and how to use it
The need for such a mechanism was first flagged when the CRC was drafted in the 1980s, but lack of consensus ultimately derailed the discussion at that time. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) tried to raise the issue in 2002 at the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children, but efforts were again thwarted.
In 2005, Ms Austin focused her international human rights law masters dissertation on the need for this optional protocol, and then immediately set out to make her vision for children’s rights a reality, aligning herself with like-minded partners, and establishing and co-chairing a coalition which launched a global campaign with this aim. By 2008, the NGO group for the CRC was ready to take this campaign under their umbrella and carried the campaign forward.
“Measuring the impact of our advocacy is a constant challenge; remaining motivated to do what we do when we don’t always see tangible and traceable results of our work can be difficult. Ms Austin’s role in this success should be shared and highlighted as an example of how an individual dream, a refusal to take no for an answer, a very strategic building of partnerships with others who shared the dream, can result in big changes for children at the international level,” said Jennifer Philpot-Nissen, senior advisor, Human Rights, Advocacy and Justice for Children – WVI.
Since the new optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child providing for a communications (or complaints) mechanism has been adopted by the UN General Assembly, it will now be time for UN member states to start the process of ratifying the optional protocol. There will be a signature and ratification process by UN member states at an official signing ceremony in February 2012, as part of the March session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. The optional protocol will enter into force upon ratification by 10 member states. World Vision is calling on UN member states to ratify the optional protocol.
