Panel details

Panel organiser(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online
Number of paper presentations	4

Abstract

Following the 2016 Grand Bargain with the pledge to localize humanitarian assistance globally, children and their rights to protection, especially in regards to humanitarian crisis response, has become an increasingly high profile issue, where various child-focused, community-based protection mechanisms have been developed in recent years to meet the immense abuse children face. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (OPIC-CRC) is, despite being the eighth individual complaints mechanism to enter into force, currently the third in terms of the number of cases adopted per year, the fifth both in terms of the number of communications registered, and the number of States parties. To date, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has received over 300 individual communications under the OPIC-CRC.
The panel proposes that correct utilization of child rights complaints mechanisms furthers accountability, both internal and external, by local as well as global actors.
The panel furthermore asks how accountability is directed, by what means and where such accountability measures are located in humanitarian action:

- What are the various formal and informal processes, mechanisms and structures within humanitarian child rights agencies that foster or hamper accountability?
- What does this mean for the legal context within which humanitarian child rights actors work, locally as well as globally?
- Does digital humanitarianism and digital means of inclusion imply or indicate accountability?

Paper presentations