Convention on the Rights of the Child conference 2001

Download the full report of the conference (PDF file 212K)

In 2000, the 10th anniversary of Australia's ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Federation of Community Legal Centres Vic began a project designed to promote the Convention and to develop strategies to strengthen compliance with the obligations contained in it.

The project had three main components:

  1. Action research about compliance with Convention obligations.
  2. Development of a series of discussion papers, highlighting key issues facing young people in Victoria
  3. Bringing together workers with young people at a working conference held at Melbourne Town Hall on 2nd March 2001. The conference was attended by 180 people from a diverse range of backgrounds, including lawyers, youth workers, health professionals, bureaucrats, educators, drug and alcohol specialists and youth housing workers.

Conference participants attended two workshops. The task of each workshop was to develop realistic action strategies to improve compliance with the obligations spelt out in the Convention and to strengthen the rights of children and young people in Victoria. The strategies look not only at what our governments can do, but also what community sector agencies can do at the policy level, at the service delivery level and through advocacy to enhance young people's rights. This web-site is intended for discussion and debate towards the implementation of these strategies.

The morning workshops focussed on developing strategies within the context of the Convention. We chose five key Convention principles as the focus for these workshops, namely:

The afternoon workshops were designed to develop strategies to improve compliance with the Convention in the context of specific areas of activity or sectors. We chose five sector areas that were identified by participants as areas of interest or expertise, namely:

The keynote speaker at the conference was Moira Rayner, Director of the Office of London Children's Rights Commissioner. Moira is well known as a longstanding advocate for children's rights, both as the former Commissioner of Equal Opportunity in Victoria and a former Chair of the National and Children's Youth Legal Centre. Moira provided inspiration for the discussion in particular about one of the more difficult but fundamental issues for agencies, namely involving young people in decision making about issues that affect them. She described how her organisation was set up and through participation, what it has achieved with an Advisory Board of children, who were appointed before any staff, wrote the job descriptions and then appointed the staff. Moira's key note address is available here.

The conference was wrapped up by Danny Sandor, President of Defence for Children International, Australian section and Board member of the National Children's and Youth Law Centre, who discussed different models and ideas for an Office for Children in Victoria.