Children's Week 2014: Discussion on the UNCRC 25 years on and the right to be heard

Megan Mitchell

National Children's Commissioner

Australian Human Rights Commission

Introduction to Children’s Week 2014

Good afternoon everyone and thank you Robyn for the introduction.

I would like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and where children have been raised and cared for for thousands of years, and pay my respects to their elders both past and present.

I would also like to thank Jennifer Evans, Red Cross CEO and Chair of the Children’s Week Council of Australia for inviting me to speak today. I also want to acknowledge my fellow guest speakers and the many distinguished guests in the audience. In particular I acknowledge my fellow speakers, the Honourable Susan Ley, Assistant Minister for Education, Catherine Yes, UNICEF Youth Ambassador and Geraldine Atkinson from SNAICC.

As you know, we are here to celebrate Children’s Week for 2014. This week is an opportunity for all of us to reflect on the rights and well-being of children and young people right across this big country.  There are many celebrations and discussions taking place this week around Australia, focusing the attention of the wider community on children’s needs, rights, talents and achievements.

As the National Children’s Commissioner, I am passionate about children’s rights and I am especially pleased that the theme of this year’s Children’s Week is the right of children to speak and be heard.
This right to be heard is enshrined in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  This article gives every child the right to be taken seriously and be heard in matters affecting them. It recognises that the right of children to have their views respected is a gateway to all other rights and the key to their active citizenship.

Hearing from children is not only empowering for them, it helps adults to get things right.  Every day, policies, programs and laws are being shaped that impact directly or indirectly on children.  They are the consumers, the clients and recipients of so much of what we do.  Ignoring the experiences and views of children, who are, after all, the experts in their own lives, will invariably lead to interventions that just don’t work for them.

Privileging the voice of children, really listening to what they have to say and taking it on board is also a powerful message to children about their value.

While this year is the 25th anniversary of when the Convention came into force, next year will be the 25th anniversary of Australia’s ratification of the Convention. This week then provides an opportunity to reflect on how well the Convention has served Australia’s children and how well Australia has served its children over the years.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most ratified international human rights treaty in the world.  This reflects the fact that nearly every country on the planet recognises the need to protect and invest in their children.  They know this is fundamental to a healthy, cohesive and productive society.

A ground breaking treaty, the Convention is an elegant framework that makes clear that children have the same human rights as adults, but that they are also entitled to special protection because of their unique vulnerabilities as children.

The rights that children and young people hold under the Convention are intrinsic to their well-being and healthy development and they are things we would all agree on - like the right to be safe, the right to be cared for and have a home, to right to education, the right to health care, the right to be treated with respect and dignity, the right to identity and culture, and of course the right to be heard.

Apart from its ethical and moral force, the Convention is a legal document, which sets out standards and assigns responsibility for ensuring these standards are met. By ratifying the Convention in 1990, Australia promised to protect and uphold the rights of children and young people.  This means putting children’s rights into legislation, policy and practice.  And while Australia is generally a good place for children and young people to grow up in, we are behind in a number of areas.

Concluding Observations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

In 2012, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which is the independent body of experts tasked with monitoring the Convention, highlighted these areas of concern about Australia’s progress in implementing the Convention.

In its Concluding on recent developments in Australia.  These included measures Observations, the Committee did make some positive comments to combat bullying, policies to improve the quality of early childhood education and care, amendments to family law to prioritise the safety of children and to reference the rights of the child, the development of guidelines regarding the privacy of children, and the implementation of paid parental leave.

However, the Committee also raised many significant concerns, which remain a concern today. Some of the most critical of these include:

• The absence of comprehensive child rights legislation or policy framework giving effect to the Convention in Australia’s national laws, programs and practices, and the lack of a national plan of action for implementing the Convention. One of the most important recent developments in this regard has been the establishment of a parliamentary committee which reviews all bills for compatibility with human rights obligations;

• the lack of disaggregated data on children, and in particular, analysed according to “ethnicity, refugee, migrant and internally displaced children, child abuse and neglect, and children who are victims of sexual exploitation”; and lastly

• the unacceptably high numbers of children in care, the continuing discrimination faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children including access to basic services and significant overrepresentation in the criminal justice system and in out-of-home care.  As we have heard of the now 40,000 plus children in care nationally, 13,000 are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. We urgently need to address this issue.  This will only be achieved by systematic and sustained investment in early intervention, so we can grow great families who can safely care and parent their children.

The Big Banter – what children told me

These concerns were also expressed during a listening tour that I undertook when I started my role as the National Children’s Commissioner. Through this tour, called The Big Banter, I spoke with hundreds of child advocates, met with well over 1000 children face-to-face from all sorts of backgrounds.  I also heard from a further 1300 or so children online and through the post.

I found that children and young people are well capable of telling us what worries them and have great ideas about how things could be better.

I learnt that children want to be with their family and with their friends, and be safe.  Many children told me that they were concerned about the levels of violence, aggression and bullying in the community, including on line and in the media.  They also said that they want to live in an environment free from drugs, alcohol and smoking.  They were worried that not all children are able to afford things or do things and wanted more stuff to be available for free.  Some other advice included that transport should be by rockets and slides – a terrific infrastructure idea I might put to the PM – there should be rivers of gooey caramel, and you should be able to wear pyjamas to school on Wednesdays.  One young girl had a terrific idea to promote healthy eating and good mental health at once - by having vending machines that dispensed free fresh fruit if you hugged it. The joy, talents, imaginations and energy of children is something I never tire of.

Many young people and adults I spoke to were also concerned about youth mental health and the high rates of self-harm among Australia’s young people.  Consequently I became aware of the latest data from 2012 showing that intentional self-harm was the leading cause of death among Australian children and young people aged 15-24.  As you may know I am currently undertaking an examination of this issue in order to understand what is happening for our young people, and what can be done to improve supportive interventions and increase help-seeking behaviour.  The results of this investigation will form the substantive content of my 2014 report to Parliament.

The right to be heard

During the tour, children also told me that they definitely want to have a say, that they had things to say and that they wanted to be more involved in the decision-making and political processes that affect their lives and the broader community.  I have no doubt they would be quite capable of this.  In fact many young people said that they would like to be able to vote. Others though thought this would be daunting and felt they didn’t have enough experience.  Some came up with ideas like being able to vote on a voluntary basis from 16 up.  Again, the wisdom of young people was on show.

Some of the things kids told me about having a say were:

Life would be better for children if we had a say in what changes - Primary school student from Tasmania

Letting Australian teenagers have a bigger say in how their schools are run would be a fantastic thing to do - 14 year old student from Victoria

Life would be better for children if adults and older people were more open to our ideas and thinking - 12 year old student from NSW

While there are some great examples of child participation in recent years, for example in individual schools and other educational settings, when it comes to respecting the views of the child as a matter of course we can do a whole lot better.

This was also echoed by the UN Committee in its Concluding Observations, who pointed out that there are inadequate fora for taking into account the views of children, especially those below the age of 15 years, or for the views of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and for those in the migration process.

As a nation, we need to make sure that we encourage organisations and individuals to systematically involve children in decisions affecting them, through information, education, guidelines or perhaps in some cases legislative requirements.

Hearing the voices of children is not only empowering for them, it also acts as an important safeguarding mechanism.  In this context, we need to make sure that we have complaints mechanisms and feedback processes for children that are accessible and responsive to their needs.  We would not need Royal Commissions into past child abuse had those institutions had put children’s interests at the centre, and importantly provided them a platform to raise concerns, be listened to and responded to.

Third Optional Protocol

This is and will continue to be a strong advocacy focus of my work.

In my 2013 report to Parliament, I made a recommendation that the Government sign on to the Third Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.  This mechanism, known as the Optional Protocol to the Convention on a Communications Procedure, would allow individual children in Australia to submit complaints, just as adults can already do, about specific violations of their rights - directly to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. This could only happen after all domestic vehicles are exhausted. Signing up to the protocol would therefore challenge us to make sure that existing mechanisms for resolving complaints and concerns are known to, accessible and available to children in Australia.  I hope that you will join me in continuing to advocate for Australia to sign and ratify this important protocol.

Effective complaints mechanisms and avenues for investigation are especially important for children in vulnerable situations. Examples include children with disabilities, children involved in care and protection and juvenile justice systems, and those caught up in family court proceedings where the decisions that are being made have a significant impact on their lives, both immediately and in the long term.

Child-safe and child-centred communities

Ultimately, it is my vision that every community, neighbourhood and organisation across the country takes up the challenge to be child-centred and child-safe – to be child rights champions. In these kinds of communities and places, children know about their rights, respect the rights of others, and can expect and rely on adults to honour and protect their rights. 

The UN Convention provides us with a clear blue print for making this happen and establishes measures by which we can assess our progress. But we need to be vigilant in ensuring its implementation.  I would love to be able, when next Australia appears before the United Nations to report on its progress in implementing the Convention, to tell a vastly improved story about Australia’s children.

In conclusion, to fully realise children’s rights we need active and systematic consideration of the interests of children and young people across Australia in the development of our laws, policies and practices. But most importantly, we need to listen. And when we listen we learn.

Thank you.