Challenging breaches of children's rights

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• The law – search database of international, regional and national ‘instruments’  
  

• Making and enforcing the law – international, regional and national ‘mechanisms’ e.g UN, African, American, European systems etc
  

• Campaign for a Complaints Mechanism under the CRC
• Strategic Litigation: Guide for NGOs and further resources
• CRC in Court: This database contains judgments from high-level national and international courts around the world. Each decision is presented in summary form with plain English explanations of the background, significance, and lessons to be learned for children's rights.

• CRC status in your country

Introduction

When governments fail to recognise and respect children’s rights, international and regional human rights mechanisms are needed to hold States to their legal obligations.

In all regions, the massive extent of breaches of children’s civil and political and economic, social and cultural rights is increasingly well-documented in reports from UN agencies, human rights institutions and NGOs. Yet few of these breaches are brought to the notice of the mechanisms that can be used to challenge them.

The mechanisms are not difficult to use.

This section aims to make existing human rights mechanisms – international and regional - well known to all those who can use them to promote and safeguard children’s rights. It will be divided into three sections: compliance, jurisprudence and avenues for redress.


Complaints

While there are mechanisms allowing for individual complaints under most other international human rights instruments, as yet there is no mechanism linked to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, CRIN is part of coalition of organisations that is campaigning for the establishment of such a mechanism.

• Read more about the Campaign for a complaints mechanism to the CRC 
• How to submit complaints to the UN
   

Guide to human rights systems around the world

• Search our new database of international and regional instruments:  http://www.crin.org/Law/search.asp
• Index to explanatory pages of international and regional human rights systems and how they work for children's rights: http://www.crin.org/law/mechanisms_index.asp
• Search our issues page by CRC articles: http://www.crin.org/issues
  
   

The CRC in your country: what is its status?

These reports offer country-level legal analyses of children's rights, focusing on:

1. Compliance and states' duties to undertake legislative and administrative reform pursuant to Article 4 of the CRC. 

2. Children's rights jurisprudence, offering an overview of important court decisions on children's rights with commentary on each article of the CRC on the international, regional and domestic levels.

3. Avenues for redress and options available for those whose rights have been violated, tracing the steps that need to be taken to pursue a judicial or non-judicial remedy in a specific jurisdiction.

Country report: Albania
Country report: Hong Kong
Country report: Brazil
Country report: Japan
Country report: Israel
Country report: Belarus
Country report: England and Wales
Country report: South Africa
Country report: Sweden

Please note that these country reports will need constant updating. If you are aware of any changes in the law that would affect the content of a report, please contact us at info@crin.org.


Background information:

• Introuduction to the United Nations Human Rights System
• Introduction to Regional Human Rights Systems
• The Council of Europe
• The Organisation of American States (OAS)
• The African Union (AU)
  
• A to Z of child rights