Children’s rights impact assessments in times of crisis: learning from COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Policy responses to COVID-19 have illuminated how children and young people’s human rights were all too often side-lined by adult concerns. With mounting queries during the first ‘lockdown’ in Scotland (March 2020), the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland asked the Observatory of Children’s Human Rights Scotland to undertake an independent Children’s Rights Impact Assessment of COVID-19 emergency public health measures on children and young people in Scotland. The resulting analysis proved not only productive for immediate policy advocacy but had broader lessons about how states parties can respect, protect and fulfil children and young people’s human rights at times of crisis and disaster. This requires challenging adult approaches and orientations to policy, so all of children and young people’s rights to provision, protection and participation are met, especially groups of children and young people who may be at particular risk of rights’ violations. This editorial outlines the process and substantive learning from the independent CRIA, from a range of experts, including children and young people.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s rights
• impact assessments
• participation
• children
• pandemic
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 One of the CRIA articles has been published in The International Journal of Human Rights, but outside this special journal issue: “Ensuring Rights Matter: England's and Scotland's Frameworks for Implementing the Rights of Children and Young People with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities” (https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2022.2057954).

2 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, CRC COVID-19 Statement, (2020), https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=INT/CRC/STA/9095&Lang=en (accessed May 11, 2020).

3 This editorial generally uses ‘children and young people’ to refer to those up to the age of 18. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) applies to children under the age of 18, unless legal majority is obtained earlier (Article 1).

4 For example, see special journal issue of International Journal of Children’s Rights, 29, no. 2, June 2021.

5 For example, see COVIDUnder19 https://www.tdh.ch/en/projects/covidunder19 (accessed December 17, 2021) and Patricio Cuevas-Parra, ‘Co-Researching with Children in the Time of COVID-19’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods 19 (2020): 1–12, 10.1177/1609406920982135

6 For more information on the Young Advisers, see https://www.cypcs.org.uk/get-help/young-people/young-advisers/ (accessed December 17, 2021).

7 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 General Measures of Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (2003), https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CRC%2fGC%2f2003%2f5&Lang=en (accessed December 17, 2021).

8 European Network of Ombudspersons for Children (ENOC), A Guide on How to Carry out CRIA (2020), http://enoc.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ENOC-Common-Framework-of-Reference-FV.pdf, p. 11 (accessed June 4, 2021).

9 Lisa Payne, ‘Child Rights Impact Assessment as a Policy Improvement Tool’, The International Journal of Human Rights 23, no. 3 (2019): 408–424.

10 We thus largely refer to CRIAs in this editorial and in the special journal issue more generally.

11 European Network of Ombudspersons for Children (ENOC), A Guide on How to Carry out CRIA (2020), http://enoc.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/ENOC-Common-Framework-of-Reference-FV.pdf (accessed June 4, 2021).

12 See www.ed.ac.uk/education/observatory (accessed December 12, 2021).

13 See https://www.cypcs.org.uk/coronavirus/independent-impact-assessment/ (accessed December 12, 2021).

14 Founded in 1996, Children’s Parliament is Scotland’s centre of excellence for children’s human rights, participation and engagement. All participating children become Members of Children’s Parliament (MCPs). Unlike other parliamentary bodies, Children’s Parliament is not an elected body. Rather it is a participatory one, engaging with children across a range of settings in order to include as many children as possible, many of whom face barriers to participation. See https://www.childrensparliament.org.uk/ (accessed December 12, 2021) for general information and https://www.childrensparliament.org.uk/tag/corona-times-journal/ (accessed December 12, 2021) for archives of the Corona Times Journal.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

K. Reid

Katie Reid is a children's participation practitioner and researcher. She was part of the Observatory for Children's Human Rights Scotland team that undertook the Independent Child Rights Impact Assessment on the COVID-19 measures in Scotland in 2020.

E.K.M. Tisdall

Kay Tisdall is Professor of Childhood Policy, in Childhood and Youth Studies, MHSES University of Edinburgh. She undertakes research, teaching and knowledge exchange addressing children's human rights, with a particular focus on children and young people's participation.

F. Morrison

Fiona Morrison is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Child Wellbeing and Protection, University of Stirling. Her research interests are in the areas of children's rights, child welfare, domestic abuse and research with children. Before entering academia, she held policy and practice roles in the areas of domestic abuse and child wellbeing.