Liam Cairns talks about the Human Rights of Children

Children’s human rights

We’ve come to understand that if we seek to challenge the injustices children and young people face from a children’s rights perspective that only gets us so far. But we want to go further than that. A much more powerful platform for change is to base that on the human rights argument and that actually children and young people like everybody else are in possession of human rights and the question is to what extent are we able (and willing) to respect these. We think that it is a much more powerful driver than locating the argument within the children’s rights filed.  

A common cause and shared struggle

In this manner we align ourselves and learn from other social movements for change, for example the women’s movement and the disability movement and we can learn …. From these other emancipatory discourses. Whereas if we continue to say that there is something special and different about young people, our opportunity to learn is limited.  

Participation means and ends

The opportunity for young people to be participants is crucial. But if that is the only the thing we think about, we’ve missed the whole emancipatory discourse. I think we have perhaps overtly focused on that and not on understanding that that is a means to an end. We have tended to see it as an end in itself.  

A greater dialogue

We’re hoping to create a rights space so that people can come together and share what they know and have done and learn from each other. We are hoping to create quite an exciting space where people can come together and be co-creators along with children and young people in developing the next steps of the journey.  

Liam Cairns

Director

Investing in Children

December 2009