Disrupt & Innovate

Many children want to defend their rights and the rights of others and when children speak out things change.

Every day, millions of children take action and influence laws, budgets, service delivery and the realization of their rights as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. They speak out on poverty, education, health, violence, the environment, discrimination, and many other things. Children are human rights defenders when they take action and promote, monitor and defend children’s rights and the rights of others.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides all children with the right to act as human rights defenders, rights which are reinforced in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.

“I believe we are all human rights defenders in our own way. Some of us in small and quiet ways because that’s how we feel and all we can give to the world and some in large ways. The impact may be big or small but we all fight for what we believe in.”
Child participating in Child Rights Connect & Centre for Children’s Rights Survey

92 per cent of children who participated in a new survey by Child Rights Connect and the Centre for Children’s Rights at Queen’s University, Belfast, see themselves as human rights defenders. But children face serious challenges when promoting and defending their rights and the rights of others. In the survey, children identify four main barriers:

• Adults do not take children seriously. They do not see children as competent and children’s views are not respected.
• Children do not feel safe; 70 per cent of children are concerned about violence when they act as human rights defenders.
• Children lack information; 40 per cent of children agree that one of the main challenges they face as human rights defenders is the lack of information about rights.
• Children sometimes struggle to act due to lack of time, money and ability to travel to meetings.

Children from the most marginalized and deprived groups often face additional challenges when they want to take action and promote and defend rights.

“Adults decide for us and think our opinions are less worthy than theirs just because we are younger. Adults play a negative role when they want to have the ‘last say’ without thinking they might be wrong.”

“They told me’ feminazi’ and that they would sexually assault me.”
Children participating in Child Rights Connect & Centre for Children’s Rights Survey

On 28 September, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child will host the first international meeting on how to empower and protect children as human rights defenders (Day of General Discussion). The UN Day of General Discussion will be a unique opportunity for the international community to hear from children on their experiences as human rights defenders, discuss challenges and opportunities and formulate clear recommendations to states and other actors.

To address the obstacles children face when promoting and defending human rights, the UN Day of General Discussion must generate clear recommendations to States to:

• Put in place and implement laws that guarantee children’s rights to take civic action online and offline, including their rights to the freedoms of expression, association, peaceful assembly and to access information.
• Provide age-appropriate public information in languages and formats that children understand.
• Establish and resource child-friendly, inclusive and safe mechanisms and platforms, such as children’s parliaments, where children from all walks of life can engage with local and national decision-makers.
• Ensure that the education system provides opportunities for children to learn about their rights and strengthen their confidence to speak out.
• Systematically promote the rights of children to be human rights defenders, address negative attitudes and build the capacity of adults to engage meaningfully with children.

“Children need to be given spaces to work together because there is power in having
many more children defending human rights”
Child participating in Child Rights Connect & Centre for Children’s Rights Survey

States are instrumental in addressing the barriers children face. But other actors also need to step up and intensify their actions.

The UN and other international inter-governmental bodies need to ensure there are child-friendly platforms, information and accreditation for children to influence their work.

“Create a virtual participation tool for children and adolescents to consider the mechanisms of the UN, amplifying their voices together in order to be heard by decision-makers at the highest levels”
Child participating in Child Rights Connect & Centre for Children’s Rights Survey

The private sector should promote and respect all children’s rights, including their rights to act as human rights defenders applying the Children’s Rights and Business Principles.

Civil society organizations must recognize children as peers and partners, stand in solidarity with children, acknowledge that children can face multiple restrictions when taking civic action and defending human rights, and support them to speak out and be safe whilst doing so.

As we celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, the Day of General Discussion must put a spotlight on what needs to change for children to be recognized, protected and empowered as human rights defenders, as a basis for more human rights focused societies.

For more information, please contact the authors:

Lena Ingelstam, Global Programme Director, Save the Children Sweden (lena.ingelstam@rb.se), and Ulrika Cilliers, Head of Advocacy, Child Rights Governance Global Theme, Save the Children (usc@redbarnet.dk), www.savethechildren.net

Tor Hodenfield, UN Adviser and Vuka! Secretariat Coalition Coordinator, CIVICUS, tor.hodenfield@civicus.org, www.civicus.org

Beatrice Schulter, Director, Child Rights Connect, schulter@childrightsconnect.org, www.childrightsconnect.org

You can find more information about the UNCRC Day of General Discussion on the OHCHR and Child Rights Connect webpages and follow the live webcast here.

• Global Perspectives
• Global Perspectives 2018

At the end of June, people from different continents gathered in Arusha, Tanzania to discuss civil and political rights in the countries they currently reside. The meeting was organized by International Civil Society Centre, and I was lucky enough to be invited as person who was involved in civic activities which contributed to this political change in a hybrid system.

Sitting for 7 hours at the Istanbul airport en route to the meeting got me thinking about nation-state concepts and people living under different political and legal environments. Some are more intrusive to civilian spaces than others, yet nearly all try to limit open public spaces for free communication, interaction and information to people coming from such diverse communities in this world and Universe we all share. Some governments are reluctant to open the world to its citizens while others actively spew hatred towards the “otherness”.

However, looking at the millions of different individuals interacting daily only in this airport, I realized that there is no repressive model invented able to stand the need of people to move, explore, exchange, socialize. Even repressive regimes need to maintain their economic and military strength if they plan to maintain power, and thus they have to participate in the exchange of labor, products, and services on global level. So, closed borders, militarization, wars, heavily urbanized killers (of health and nature) cities… are these constructed spaces just a product of our imagination as humans? And if so, can we imagine something better in future? Can we take a leap on the evolutionary scale by recognizing such constructs and think of all natural space as an empty canvas on which we can draw a better picture? Is that just a prelude to the next step: aware humanity?

Is the social interaction and exchange the key to opening the door to awareness of the co-dependence of all beings with nature? Can mistakes and destruction lead to comprehension that natural resources and our habitat as we know it is expendable, while humanity being dependable may parish?

This thought stayed with me on the 10 h. flight to Arusha, and throughout the 4 days which passed faster than those 17 hours of travel! I met people, heard stories, and developed deep friendships with activists from:Hong Kong, Singapore, Argentina, Uganda, Congo, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Cameron, Tanzania, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Germany, United States of America…

We share the same vision on what our civic space should look like as spaces extending to communities where social interaction take places, where people see each other even without communication, where friends meet, or celebrate and cultures mix. Something like the scenery I’ve tried to capture while pondering the airport in Istanbul.

One may ask, did we succeed to finding a way to protect our spaces for communication and democracy? Did we detect and overcome the obstacles to future participatory democracies with citizens well-being put on the top of the political agenda? Have we thought of ways to remove the different restraints on civil and political rights? How to protect your self and others from government oppression, military power, hunger and live in societies which allow people to organize, participate and communicate among each other without fear of prosecution, pollution, famine, overall natural and human deprivation?

Well, reaching the end of the text the obvious answer is no, we didn’t find the way. We didn’t solve the world hunger, wars, dictators or housing problems, but we have few ideas on how to get people together to socialize and communicate their hardship openly and freely. We thought of ways how people can help each other across borders, governments and continents and that is a force to be reckoned. Remember that one thing I’ve mentioned that governments and militaries can’t stop, at the beginning of this text?

Well, they can’t stop us from meeting, talking, thinking and acting in the public or virtual world. They may slow the process by different forms of oppression, but they can’t stop it.

• Civic Charter

Three years ago, Renee Ho and I reflected on this blog about the changing nature of intermediation. Intermediation, we argued, was becoming localized and decentralized. Citizens were better able to express their needs and priorities, aided by new online tools.  Service providers and implementers could no longer “control the narrative” because their donors and other stakeholders could see what people thought of their work. We argued that International Civil Society Organizations (ISCOs) should reconfigure to enable and amplify the effects of stronger connections, transparency and accountability.  

Three years on, the shift to a more connected world is accelerating.  The opportunity – and need – for smart, evolving ISCO intermediation is stronger than ever. In this follow-up, my colleague Megan Campbell and I would like to discuss three lessons learned, which together should help shape the evolution of ICSOs over the coming years:

Listening isn’t action

Listening and engagement initiatives are proliferating. They are a great first step, but responding is the hard part – and increasingly the binding constraint.  And listening without action is a waste of time at best – and breeds cynicism and mistrust at worst. I myself have been waiting over 2,000 days for a response of an issue I raised with a local government agency on the SeeClickFix platform. No one has bothered to even tell me whether they have heard it, and if so why they can’t (or won’t) take action.  Large organizations and governments are struggling to put in place adaptive management processes that enable them to respond to the voice of the people they seek to serve.

Don’t limit yourself to Incremental responses

In an recent article, Lant Pritchett argued that the gains from targeted interventions, of the kind favored by many aid agencies and practitioners, are dwarfed by the gains that come from broader institutional development and policy changes. Similarly, listening initiatives often focus on feedback about specific interventions – what can we do right away? But sometimes we need to step back and ask what type of fundamental shifts in resources, decision-making power, and institutional processes do we need to bring about more profound and longer-lasting changes?

Conversation is key

In 2015 I celebrated shifting the power toward individual donors and users. Yet this does not mean decisions should be made by plebiscite. The true power of feedback comes from rich conversations that generate new ideas and understanding.  Most people understand the need for institutions – political, economic, and social. They want to hear the insights of specialists, regulators, and leaders. They just don’t want those “experts” to make all the decisions unilaterally: they want their own voices and perspectives to be heard.  They want to be part of a genuine conversation about what they need to make their lives better – and how to get it. The evidence shows that good conversations that include the people and the leaders as equal partners can lead to major gains in social, environmental, and economic outcomes.

Will ICSOs seize the opportunity, open their doors, and seek out rich conversations with the people they seek to serve?  Will they create adaptive management processes that close the loop by changing what they do – sometimes incrementally, sometimes fundamentally? Or will they hunker down, reinforce their defenses, and continue to try to control the narrative?  Each organization’s answer to those questions will determine whether the organization survives and leads – or dwindles into irrelevance.