Panel details

Panel organiser(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online
Number of paper presentations	6

Abstract

Children and Improved Crisis Response: Innovations to empower young people in relation to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a Communications Procedure

Every day 16 000 children die, often during a humanitarian crisis across the world. Thousands of lives lost, daily, due to preventable or treatable causes. The establishment of a communications procedure for children under the Convention on the Rights of the Child is meant to empower children to work against this situation themselves.
The proposed panel invites papers from various disciplines able to examine the topic of improving crisis response with a child rights perspective from the three distinctive topics of international law, the impact of technology and changing realities.
• Under international law, States’ ratification and implementation of the Optional Protocol on a Communication Procedure allows individual children to submit complaints regarding specific violations of their rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its first two Optional Protocols. The empowerment of children should lead to Changing Actors and Challenges from Below.
• The impact of and possibilities with Technological Innovations are just starting to unfold and become understood to humanitarian actors. Clearly, this calls for fresh approaches and innovative application of modern technology to serve the rights of children caught in crisis.
• The changing realities in crisis response include large amounts of uncertainty, unpredictability and rapid changes that require quick adjustment. In order to enhance our efficiency and identify existing gaps in knowledge. This raises queries on how to further empirical research with multi-disciplinary approaches in the field of human rights in general, and with child-rights focus in particular.

Paper presentations