UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is an international human rights treaty that recognises and protects the human rights of children. It was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989 and is the most widely ratified international human rights instrument.

The UNCRC was signed by the UK in 1990, ratified in late 1991 and came into force on 15 January 1992. The convention requires all state parties to report to the UN Commitee on the Rights of the Child their progress against the convention. The convention can be viewed at the following link to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights webste.

The United Nations is a group of 192 countries. They work together to try and make life better for everyone. To help with this they created a set of rights that are especially for children and young people. This is called the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and all countries except the United States and Somalia have signed up to it.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child examines the UK Government to see how well it is protecting children’s rights contained in the Convention. The Committee is made up of experts on these issues from around the world. The Committee met in September 2008.

Information on the progress that had been made since the last reporting period was provided by the governments in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and put into one report. The Committee considers this information and makes recommendations from that and from expert evidence to create what are called 'concluding observations'. Where the word 'children' is used throughout this document it means children and young people up to 18 years of age.

Having considered the report and other evidence from Children’s Commissioners and other organisations with an interest in children’s rights, the Committee has made more than 100 concluding observations (recommendations) about where the UK government including the Northern Ireland Executive must do more to put the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) fully into practice.

The UK's first report was submitted to the UN Committee in 1994, and was followed by the Second Report submitted in 1999 and updated in 2002. The latest UK report was sent to the Committee in July 2007. We have also produced a Northern Ireland specific report, in line with the approach by Wales and Scotland.

In accordance with the recommendation of the UN Committee, we ran a series of consultations, both with the NGO sector and with children and young people during February 2007 including children and young people considered 'hard-to-reach'. These included meetings with young people with a disability, who have left care, have special needs, are gay, lesbian or bi-sexual, have been in conflict with the law or in alternative education provsion. Consultations were conducted across Northern Ireland. A report on the consultations carried out can be viewed below. A young people's version of the report has also been produced and can be viewed below.

The UNCRC recently convened in Geneva on 3 October 2008.  They have recently released their concluding observations of this meeting. This is split up into 3 sections. These are:

This last section covers the following:

The spin wheel is a fun document for primary-school children which tells them about their rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.