Strengthening Children’s Care Reforms through Access to Justice: Webinar

Join us for this webinar spotlighting the powerful intersection between two consequential global advocacy movements in human rights: the reform of alternative care systems for children and the advancement of children’s access to justice. By bringing these movements into closer dialogue, the session will demonstrate how integrated approaches can strengthen the protection and promotion the rights of children who are in, or at risk of entering, or transitioning out of, alternative care.

Grounded in a commitment to amplifying children’s views and lived experiences and driven by the ambition to realize children’s human rights within alternative care, this session will:

• Explore the role of child-centred justice and other mechanisms in enabling children and families to actively claim their rights. This includes securing access to essential services that prevent unnecessary family separation, and the ability to challenge inappropriate placement or gatekeeping decisions, for example.

• Examine how justice and other mechanisms can provide effective remedies when children’s rights are violated in alternative care, and how accountability can be leveraged to drive systemic change across care and protection systems, ultimately safeguarding children’s rights to prevent harm.

By examining these dimensions, the session aims to inspire collaborative strategies that accelerate the advancement of children's rights across care and justice sectors.

Join us as young people alongside government, CSO and international experts together will explore how these vital movements intersect and how collective action can build on these efforts to uphold children’s human rights in care reform efforts around the globe.

This webinar will also form the launch of the new UNICEF Reimagining Justice for Children Technical Brief “Children in Civil Proceedings”.

Speakers include:

Sheema Sen Gupta, UNICEF

Benoit Van Keirsbilck, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

K.G. Nimali S. Kumari, Care experienced Advocate, Sri Lanka

Diahann Gordon Harrison, Children’s Advocate of Jamaica (TBC)

Karabo Ozah, Director of the Centre for Child Law, University of Pretoria

UK Government, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office representative

Moderators:

Florence Martin, Executive Director, Better Care Network

Jennifer Davidson, Lead, Global Working Group on SDG 16+ Justice for Children and Professor, Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures at the University of Strathclyde

For more information, see here.