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Child Rights Impact Assessment
Public policy is stronger when children’s best interests are a priority and the impacts on children are specifically considered in policy development processes. Child rights impact assessment is a systematic process to assess the potential impacts of decisions on children and their rights and promote policy coherence.
Article 3, Convention on the Rights of the Child
“In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative bodies or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.”
One of the four core principles of the Convention, “best interests of the child”, emphasizes the need to assess the impacts on children of all actions by a country’s institutions.
As a systematic and explicit method of ensuring that policymaking takes potential impacts on children and their rights sufficiently into account, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommends that all countries conduct “child rights impact assessment” on decisions that will have an impact on children – both child-specific actions, but importantly, also other actions that can have an impact on children.
Ready to implement Child Rights Impact Assessments? Visit www.criacommunity.org for in-depth information and tools for practitioners and policy-makers.