Adolescents will have their say in the General Comment on the rights of adolescents

March 2015

Our Chair, Gerison Lansdown, has been commissioned by UNICEF to develop, on behalf of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, a General Comment on the rights of adolescents.

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A General Comment is a document issued by the Committee which elaborates and provides guidance as to how they expect governments to implement a particular provision in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or how rights must be implemented in respect of a particular group of children.

The General Comment will recognise the very different experiences of  adolescents across the regions of the world. It will stress the rights of all adolescents, without discrimination,  to enjoy their rights , emphasising that governments must take action to remove the many cultural, economic, legal, social and physical barriers that prevent that enjoyment for different groups of adolescents, for example, boys or girls, those with or without disabilities, those from poor or marginalised communities, or refugees or migrants. And while all rights apply to children of all ages, the way in which they are realised must take account of adolescents’ evolving capacities to exercise their rights for themselves, while also recognising their continued entitlement to protection.

A participatory endeavour

For the General Comment to fully comprehend the obstacles that adolescents are facing, it must consider them as experts of their situations. Hence it is being drafted from learning drawn from previous consultations with adolescents and is currently asking for submissions from anyone who has “relevant research evidence, findings from consultations with adolescents, examples of laws, policies or programmes, or evidence of good practice that would contribute to the drafting process.”

You can find a copy of an outline of the proposed General Comment, and the address to send submissions on the website of the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRC/Pages/CallRightsofAdolescents.aspx

(Deadline for submissions is 1st April.)

Lastly, the General Comment will receive feedback from adolescents during the CATS (Children as Actors for Transforming Society) conference in July-August 2015 in Caux, Switzerland. These adolescents will have the chance to conduct surveys at CATS and draft the recommendations to the Committee based on their findings.