World Children’s Day

On this World Children’s Day, please see this important report focussing on the role of child rights in addressing child poverty: ‘Protecting the Child from Poverty: The Role of  Rights in the Council of Europe’.

There is growing concern about child poverty levels in Europe, as well as the implications of these for children’s lived experiences, broader societal wellbeing, and economic development. There is simultaneously ever wider political, practitioner and advocate recognition that child poverty causes, results from, and constitutes a failure to secure children’s rights – and that child rights have a crucial potential role to play in shaping state responses to child poverty in Europe. This is true of children’s social, economic, political, cultural and civil rights, all of which are threatened by a life lived in poverty. Responding to these facts, this report centres on the role of child rights in addressing child poverty in the Council of Europe (COE). In focusing on the child poverty-related provisions of the European Social Charter 1961 and the Revised Charter of 1996, the report outlines how those instruments, as interpreted by the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR), constitute a framework for assessing and critiquing measures taken to combat child poverty https://rm.coe.int/protecting-the-child-from-poverty-the-role-of-rights-in-the-council-of/168098c54c

The report was presented at the International Conference on Children’s Rights held by the COE on 13-14 November 2019. It was also discussed by the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe at its meeting on child poverty 15 November 2019.

The UK’s record in terms of giving effect to the child’s right to social and economic protection (Article 17) under the European Social Charter is being considered by the European Committee of Social Rights this year and its findings will be issued in January 2020.  

Aoife Nolan

Professor of International Human Rights Law, School of Law, University of Nottingham; Member, Council of Europe European Committee of Social Rights; Co-lead, Rights and Justice Research Priority Area

 

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