Rights and economic justice

Children’s rights

Every child and young person has rights, no matter who they are or where they live. These are enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, based on the world’s first declaration on children’s rights, written by our founder Eglantyne Jebb in 1923.

Nearly every government in the world promised to protect, respect and fulfil these rights, yet children’s rights are still violated worldwide. We refuse to accept this. We believe that all children should have their rights respected and protected.

Children’s rights include:

  • personal rights, such as the right to a name and a nationality and freedom of thought
  • access to services, such as clean water and food, education and state support for a child’s family
  • protection from exploitation, violence, neglect and abuse.

We believe that these rights are violated for several reasons:

  • governments rarely prioritise children, and fail to recognise that they have rights
  • children are not listened to; this disempowers them and leaves them vulnerable to exclusion and exploitation.

We protect children’s rights by:

  • helping to establish mechanisms and structures which will promote and protect children’s rights, such as children’s ombudsmen and independent human rights institutions
  • creating indicators and analysing situations to help us measure governments’ compliance with international law
  • campaigning to get children’s rights principles and standards included in domestic law and policy
  • supporting our programmes to use existing mechanisms and structures (such as the African Committee on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the European Convention on Human Rights) to promote and protect children’s rights
  • working with key donors and agencies to develop strategies to promote children’s rights
  • undertaking strategic litigation on children’s rights issues
  • assisting children and young people to make their views heard and become an integral part of the change process
  • supporting the creation of mechanisms which empower children to advocate for the promotion and realisation of their rights.

Poverty and economic justice

Most of the world’s poor people are children. They miss out on the basics of life, such as good health, nutrition, education and security. Just how poor they are, the extent and severity of that poverty, is directly linked to the economic policies and activities that ignore children’s rights to a happy, healthy and secure childhood. The very poorest children and their families are often excluded or not considered by decision-makers, and that has a major impact on their well-being.

We are pushing for:

  • more resources to be invested nationally and internationally in reducing childhood poverty
  • policies that ensure that those resources actually reach the poorest children.

We also promote policies and programmes to remove the economic causes that make it difficult for poor families to protect and care for their children.

Our key areas of work include:

  • researching and advocating pro-poor policies and public spending to benefit children
  • helping families to make a better living, increasing their ability to care for their children
  • improving the quality and amount of aid that goes towards the reduction of poverty
  • ensuring that revenues paid to governments by private companies are transparent and spent on poverty reduction, and that the impact of the private sector on children’s rights is understood.

In all of these areas, our work is based on the results of our research into the impact of economic policies on children and on our experience of working directly with children.

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