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4.4 Engagement with International Bodies
DHRD Article 9(4)
… in accordance with applicable international instruments and procedures, everyone has the right, individually and in association with others, to unhindered access to and communication with international bodies with general or special competence to receive and consider communications on matters of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
4.4.1 The United Nations
When children engage with the United Nations (UN) and in particular, the UN human rights mechanisms, they are acting to promote or protect human rights as their actions are aimed at better implementation of international human rights norms and standards. These children are HRDs and should be recognized and treated as such by the UN and its Member States. States should support the work of CHRDs at the UN in a number of ways, including by creating and expanding safe spaces for children to speak up and by empowering them to monitor and report on the implementation of the international human rights norms and standards.
DGD2018 recommended that the UN provide CHRDs with information that enables them to effectively engage with its human rights mechanisms and promote the participation of CHRDs in its work related to children’s rights, putting in place child-friendly platforms and processes to facilitate children’s in-person or virtual engagement. The UN human rights mechanisms should also develop and advance the standards on the protection and empowerment of CHRDs by making recommendations and providing technical assistance to Member States.
4.4.2 The Committee on the Rights of the Child
When children engage with the United Nations (UN) and in particular, the UN human rights mechanisms, they are acting to promote or protect human rights as their actions are aimed at better implementation of international human rights norms and standards. These children are HRDs and should be recognized and treated as such by the UN and its Member States. States should support the work of CHRDs at the UN in a number of ways, including by creating and expanding safe spaces for children to speak up and by empowering them to monitor and report on the implementation of the international human rights norms and standards.
DGD2018 recommended that the UN provide CHRDs with information that enables them to effectively engage with its human rights mechanisms and promote the participation of CHRDs in its work related to children’s rights, putting in place child-friendly platforms and processes to facilitate children’s in-person or virtual engagement. The UN human rights mechanisms should also develop and advance the standards on the protection and empowerment of CHRDs by making recommendations and providing technical assistance to Member States.
30 years of experience showed that children’s engagement in the CRC Reporting is one of the most powerful ways to empower children human rights defenders to advance the realization of children’s rights through monitoring, reporting and advocacy.”
Chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child
The Committee is the key expert monitoring body and accountability mechanism for children’s rights. It is mandated to monitor and assess how States parties to the CRC, and its Optional Protocols promote and protect the rights of CHRDs under the CRC and its Optional Protocols. Through the DGD2018, the Committee has started specifically recognizing the role of CHRDs and providing guidance and standards on the implementation of their rights in their recommendations to States.
Concluding Observations: Guinea
‘The Committee reminds the State party that human rights defenders, particularly child human rights defenders, deserve protection as their work is crucial for the promotion of human rights for all, including for children, and thus urges the State party to adopt and implement the draft law on the promotion and protection of human rights defenders that was presented to the Minister of National Unity and Citizenship by civil society in December 2018, while ensuring that the needs of child human rights defenders are addressed. ’
The Committee has been at the forefront of initiatives to involve CHRDs in its activities and has issued detailed guidance on the involvement of children in periodic reporting procedures and participation in DGDs. It clarified that States have an obligation to engage children in the preparation of the State reports to the Committee and that they should support children to prepare their own alternative report.
The Committee meets with children during its meetings of pre-sessional working groups, encourages their participation in different activities, provides child-friendly information through a dedicated webpage and regularly reviews its own practice.
The Committee also has made it a standard that there is consultation with children in the development of the General Comments and developed good practices accordingly. Children’s views have been referenced directly in the most recent General Comments.
Listening to Children in the Development of General Comments
The Committee’s General Comment No.19 on public spending was informed by a global consultation with 2,693 children from 71 countries, conducted via an online survey, focus groups and regional consultations in Asia, Europe and Latin America. The consultation included contributions from boys and girls of different backgrounds in terms of age, gender, ability, socioeconomic context, language, ethnicity, school enrolment, displacement and experience of child-participatory budgeting. The process was a unique opportunity to empower children to act as HRDs and conduct advocacy on the issue of child rights resources in their countries.
Children can also submit individual communications to the Committee under the Third Optional Protocol to the CRC on an Individual Communications Procedure (OPIC). Ratification of the OPIC not only provides CHRDs with an accessible international mechanism, including child-sensitive procedures, that complies with Article 9(4) of the Declaration. It also has an important normative value, providing an unequivocal statement that States recognize that children are entitled to seek remedies for violations of their own human rights. CHRDs who experience violations of their rights under the CRC and its Optional Protocols outlined in this Guide can send a communication to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, if the violating State (which may not be the State in which the child lives) has ratified the OPIC and if the case meets the admissibility requirements. While the full range and detail of rights for children set out in the CRC will be the most powerful instrument for CHRDs, they can also use the individual communication mechanisms established under other international human rights instruments to pursue many of their rights under those instruments, if their State (the violating State) has ratified those instruments.
However, there is still room for increasing children’s access to the Committee, as highlighted by the DGD2018 recommendation: ‘The Committee should continue to expand the channels of communications with child human rights defenders and make additional efforts to ensure that its reporting process is accessible to all children, including those from marginalized groups.’
The Committee should also strengthen its safeguarding procedures and more actively promote the mainstreaming of the rights of CHRDs, child participation and safeguarding within the broader UN system.
4.4.3 The Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders
The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders is the key expert of the UN that specifically promotes the effective implementation of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. The Special Rapporteur has developed a collaboration with the Committee by actively engaging in the DGD2018, which is reflected in the final recommendations, including as follows: ‘The Committee should strengthen its cooperation with the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in providing guidance to States on how to integrate the protection and empowerment of child human rights defenders into national legislation and policy.’
Since the DGD2018, the Special Rapporteur has met with children during country visits and to review the particular situation of CHRDs both in global, thematic and country reports. The 2019 country reports on Moldova and Mongolia explicitly refer to the specificities of the situation of CHRDs. The report on Mongolia introduces children and young HRDs as a specific group of defenders at risk and needing special protection. The impact of children’s involvement in the Special Rapporteur’s visit to Mongolia went beyond influencing the visit’s final recommendations. The experience encouraged the children involved to undertake advocacy at the national and international levels on their rights as defenders. The children provided technical inputs to the government on the draft law on the protection of HRDs, thus becoming the first ever group of CHRDs to directly implement the DGD2018’s recommendation: ‘States should develop and adopt comprehensive national laws and policies on protection and empowerment of human rights defenders, including children human rights defenders.’
4.4.4. Other Human Rights Treaty Bodies
CHRDs can engage with other Human Rights Treaty Bodies if their States have ratified their corresponding treaties. States should empower children to do so, as the engagement with other Treaty Bodies provides an opportunity for children to gain wider understanding of their human rights and the UN human rights mechanisms, as well as additional leverage for their actions as HRDs. It can also strengthen the international human rights standards related to their rights. All Treaties Bodies should make their periodic reporting and communications procedures accessible to children, drawing on the experience of the Committee. While this is beginning to happen to a much greater extent than before, there is considerable scope for other Treaty Bodies to work with CHRDs to make their work more accessible and relevant to children.
Promoting child participation in Human Rights Committee processes
In 2020, Child Rights Connect collaborated with the Human Rights Committee – the Treaty Body mandated to monitor the implementation of the ICCPR – to gather children’s views on the Committee’s General Comment No. 37 on peaceful assembly. With an increasing number of children taking part in peaceful protests around the world, most notably in strikes against climate change, Child Rights Connect sought to ensure that children could share with the UN what the right to peaceful assembly means to them and what barriers they face in exercising this right. Through a survey, Child Rights Connect heard from 91 children, aged 10-18 years old, from 15 different countries, across five regions (East Asia and Pacific, Latin America and Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa). Their voices informed our submission to the UN.
4.4.5. Human Rights Council Special Procedures and Universal Periodic Review
The UN Human Rights Council has established human rights mechanisms such as Special Procedures and the Universal Periodic Review that are an important means through which CHRDs can communicate concerns and advocate for children’s rights.
Special Procedures include Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts or Working Groups that monitor, advise and publicly report on human rights situations in specific territories or on thematic issues. Many of them work on issues that are very relevant to CHRDs (such as the environment, indigenous peoples, disability, the sale of children, freedom of expression, assembly and association). They can be unique mechanisms to promote the enjoyment of human rights by CHRDs and to provide a venue for CHRDs to seek support in preventing and addressing human rights violations. In order for these mechanisms to be effective, all Special Procedures should be accessible to all HRDs, including children. This will involve developing child participation and child safeguarding procedures, including by: enabling children to submit communications; consulting with children directly on matters affecting them when conducting research and consultations; meeting with CHRDs during country visits; or providing CHRDs with age-appropriate and timely information in a language and format they can understand (e.g. producing child-friendly versions of reports).
Special procedures’ engagement with children
The Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment developed a child friendly version of his report on Children’s Rights and the Environment (available in all UN languages) and has supported a series of regional consultations with children as part of the Children’s Environmental Rights Initiative.
Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is an important mechanism to advance the rights of CHRDs. Although the UPR is an intergovernmental review mechanism of the overall human rights situation of all UN Member States by all UN Member States, it provides for the opportunity to civil society, including CHRDs, to contribute to the process at different stages and in different ways in order to share information about the countries under review. It has been an increasing practice for CHRDs to participate in the UPR process by sending child-led reports or participating in the pre-sessions, practices which further enhance visibility of CHRDs and mainstream children’s rights.
Both States and civil society have a role in ensuring that the views of CHRDs are heard in the process, through both the State report and the stakeholder report, and in engaging them in the implementation phase of the UPR recommendations.
4.4.6. Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict
Both the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children (SRSG VAC) and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (SRSG CAAC), as independent global advocates leading in the protection and well-being of children in their respective fields, play a role in advancing the rights of CHRDs and providing a platform to amplify their voices. Both SRSGs play a bridging role among stakeholders and work closely with civil society, including children, in their work when developing reports, providing technical assistance or in country visits. Good practices are being developed.
4.4.7. Other United Nations Opportunities
The UN Secretariat and UN agencies and programmes are developing mechanisms to prevent cases of reprisals against HRDs as well as to ensure protection, remedies and accountability for victims of reprisals. In 2017, the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights was designated as the UN senior official to lead efforts towards a more comprehensive and coordinated UN system-wide response with the support of the OHCHR’ reprisals team. A specific email address is available (reprisals@ohchr.org) whereby the UN and its partners, including civil society organizations and victims and their family members, may submit information on acts of intimidation and reprisals. Another example is the United Nations Environmental Programme’s Defenders Policy to promote greater protection for individuals and groups who are defending their environmental rights, and provide solutions to mitigate the abuse of environmental rights which affects a growing number of people in many parts of the world. Even though work still needs to be done to ensure that the UN has mechanisms in place that are child-sensitive and accessible to CHRDs, CHRDs should be supported in making use of these various mechanisms.
4.4.8. Regional Human Rights Mechanisms
Regional human rights bodies and complaints mechanisms can make a significant contribution to the work of CHRDs.
The African Union has a Special Rapporteur on HRDs. The European Union and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have Commissioners on HRDs and have, for example, produced guidance on support for HRDs. While the latter do not address children as HRDs specifically, many of the recommendations (such as facilitating meetings and enhancing visibility as well as advocating for support mechanisms that protect family members) would benefit CHRDs considerably. Guidance should be revised or supplemented to address the specific rights and distinctive experiences of CHRDs. The OSCE/ ODIHR’s guidance on protecting the rights of HRDs, for example, makes a number of explicit references to children, including the following: ‘Public protection policies and programmes should also take into account the specific challenges and needs of other categories of human rights defenders, including youth and children human rights defenders,’ and ‘Youth human rights defenders, including children, are often portrayed as being too young to have an opinion and are denied the right to express their views.’ Further guidance, drawing on this Implementation Guide, should reinforce the fact that children are HRDs and expand on the implications of this in practice. It could also be of a collective nature to prevent harm to children due to their association with an organization, a group, or a community with identified or identifiable members.