Northern Ireland: Children's rights
In Northern Ireland, children's rights are not adequately protected by existing law. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is not directly enforceable and the Human Rights Act contains few rights specific to children and young people.
We hold government to account for protecting children's rights and ensure they incorporate a children's rights perspective in all aspects of their work.
We campaign for a strong, inclusive and enforceable Bill of Rights (PDF 86KB) for Northern Ireland that offers maximum protection to children and young people.
Our achievements include
- producing a major research report, Protecting Children and Young People's Rights in the Bill of Rights (PDF 532KB) for Northern Ireland
- securing the establishment of the office of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (NICCY), in partnership with the Children's Law Centre and an alliance of children and young people's organisations
- submitting reports every five years on the state of children's rights in Northern Ireland to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child; the next is due in autumn 2007.
Protection
Save the Children is a member of the Children Are Unbeatable! alliance, which campaigns for children to get the same legal protection from assault as adults have.
We work in partnership with the Parents Advice Centre to help parents and childcare workers develop alternatives to physical punishment as a method of discipline. An evaluation of this work (PDF 303KB) shows that using positive forms of discipline reduces stress and improves relationships between children and their parents and other carers.
Participation
We work to ensure that government departments and local authorities routinely take children and young people’s views into account when they develop policies and services. In partnership with other agencies, we developed Turning up the Sound (PDF 800KB), a mechanism for how best to do this.
Save the Children supported the groundbreaking establishment of Shadow Youth Councils in County Fermanagh and Derry city, in order to ensure that local council policies take children's needs and views into account. We then produced What youth think! (PDF 734KB), a practical guide to support other Councils establishing their own Shadow Youth Councils.
Children's rights around the world
Save the Children helps children in Northern Ireland learn about the lives of the children we work with around the world. We support those who work with children - teachers and youth workers, for example - to find out more about children's rights.
Our initiatives to encourage greater knowledge and understanding of children's rights - or lack of them - include:
- taking three young journalists from the young people's news agency Headliners to last year's international AIDS conference in Toronto
- co-hosting a seminar in Belfast looking at how schools in Northern Ireland can support children and young people affected by HIV
- working in a small group of schools to help teachers and children build their knowledge of specific issues relating to children's rights to health and education.
And we marked the launch of our new partnership with the UNESCO Centre's International Development Unit by hosting a seminar, Realising the Rights to Education in Areas of Conflict.
As part of our ongoing campaigning, we help children to design their own campaigns and active citizenship projects in support of children's rights everywhere.
We urge them to join Save the Children campaigns to bring about dramatic and lasting change for the world's poorest and most vulnerable children.
For example children in Northern Ireland took part in Rewrite the Future, our global campaign to provide education for millions of children affected by conflict. Young people entered our schools competition to write a news script for Downtown Radio.
