Environmental rights landmark invites Children’s Rights Education into classrooms

Something significant happened for Children’s Rights this year. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child published a new general comment on how children’s rights should be interpreted under the Convention on the Rights of the Child [CRC]. General Comment No. 26 is about children’s environmental rights with a special focus on climate change and the duty of governments to act immediately. The key force behind this recommendation came from the strong global voices of children. This milestone is an opportunity to celebrate, to put children’s rights in the school curriculum and use the CRC as a guiding framework for teaching, learning and the wider school community.

The role of children’s voice

General Comment No. 26 states that there is an urgent need to address the climate emergency, the collapse of biodiversity and pollution. Consultations with children comprising of discussions, surveys, and workshops about children’s rights and their environment took place around the world. There were 16,331 contributions from children in 121 countries (OHCHR, 2023). According to Philip Jaffé, a member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child,

“Children worldwide have been leading the fight against climate change; calling on their governments and corporations to take action to protect the planet and their future. With its General Comment No. 26, the Committee on the Rights of the Child not only echoes and amplifies children’s voices, but also clearly defines the rights of children in relation to the environment that States Parties should respect, protect and fulfil… collectively and urgently!” (UNICEF, 2023). This is a remarkable level of children’s agency and participation in developing a human rights instrument.  

Furthermore, the Children’s Advisory Team that guided the UN Committee are creating a Global Charter to demand their rights to a clean and healthy environment and ensure that this recommendation is legally recognised. General Comment No.26 and the Global Charter were launched on September 18, 2023. This is an opportunity for everyone to support these legal rights, to teach about, through and for children’s rights, and to celebrate and encourage young people to continue being active citizens on a global scale.  

Children’s rights education

The CRC is an international human rights treaty to recognise and protect the special rights of children. There are 54 articles and four main principles for survival, development, protection, and participation. These principles with the specific articles directed at education, offer a firm guiding framework for curriculum and schools. Children have the right to fair treatment, to have the opportunity to say what is best for them and participate with agency. Children are, therefore, citizens. (Osler & Starkey, 2005; Jerome & Starkey, 2021). Children’s Rights Education [CRE] empowers students to learn about their rights and develops their opportunities for realising these rights and defending the rights of others.

Sometimes there is the misconception that the focus for children’s rights should be in far off lands but not here in our own lucky country. However, Australia doesn’t have a glowing report card. Australia ratified the CRC in December 1990 and is held accountable by international bodies to enforce the treaty. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child was critical of the Australian government in their latest 2019 inspection and report, calling out poor treatment of migrant children, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and criticising the low age of criminal responsibility in Australian jurisdictions (OHCHR, 2019). The age of criminal responsibility is ten years old and one of the lowest in the world (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2020). In addition to this, children’s participation in matters that affect them is lacking in Australian social policy and practice (Canosa et al., 2022).  

Some scholars that have researched CRE show that it can have transformative impacts on the lives of young people. Research in England illustrated that CRE can have a positive impact on reducing social disadvantage (Covell et al. 2011). A study in India highlighted how school students experienced personal changes, took human rights actions, and spread awareness of rights (Bajaj, 2012). Spann et al. (2021) found that CRE can help with conflict mediation in schools in Colombia, building skills for peace and respect for other perspectives.  

Opportunities for CRE in the Australian Curriculum

The most obvious application of CRE in the Australian Curriculum is in the general capability Ethical Understanding (ACARA, 2023). Children’s rights education guides the exploration of “values, rights and responsibilities, understanding ethical concepts and issues, and reasoning in decision-making and actions” (ACARA, 2023). Knowledge about rights is evident in the capability but also learning through rights is seen in the ethical understanding in learning areas outlined in the chance to develop skills to “promote students’ confidence as decision-makers and foster their ability to act with regard for others” (ACARA, 2023).

The cross-curriculum priorities in the Australian curriculum also offer opportunities to engage with children’s rights education. Applying a rights approach to the priorities of  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultures,  Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia and  Sustainability has the capacity to foster strong school communities and global connections with human rights and intercultural understanding in specific contexts. Practical suggestions for connecting children’s rights to the CCPs include critically engaging with a diversity of complex human narratives, poems, and stories. These support the investigation of authentic rights-based experiences, issues, and truth-telling (Manathunga et al., 2020; Osler, 2015; Thomas & Vinh, 2019). Furthermore, using Freinet’s pedagogy of child-child relationships, a democratic class cooperative, as an independent mini-society (Jerome & Starkey, 2022) could be set up for meaningful sustainability actions and projects.  

The launch of General Comment No. 26 is proof that human rights is a struggle. As we face unprecedented global crises, our responsibility to recognise and defend children’s rights is a path to social justice and protection of the planet. Our responsibility to empower young people to realise their rights as citizens now and of the future is bolstered by the new addition to children’s environmental rights under the CRC. With a children’s rights education approach, teachers and students have the potential to work together in schools to build communities of active change agents.

Resources for Children’s Rights Education

Child-friendly poster download

Plan International: https://plan-international.org/child-friendly-poster-convention-rights-child/

UNICEF: https://www.unicef.org.au/what-are-child-rights

Child rights education toolkit (UNICEF) https://www.unicef.org/documents/child-rights-education-toolkit

Human Rights for the Australian Curriculum (Australian Human Rights Commission) https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/education/publications/human-rights-examples-australian-curriculum

Human Rights Education Resources (Australian Human Rights Commission) https://cool.org/human-rights-education-resources

Short course on children’s rights and why they matter https://agora.unicef.org/course/info.php?id=11073

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Dr. Caroline Ferguson

Experienced teacher, teacher educator and researcher in Global Citizenship Education

Contact: caroline.ferguson@utas.edu.au

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References

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2023). Ethical Understanding (Version 8.4).  https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/ethical-understanding/

Australian Human Rights Commission. (2020). Review of the age of criminal responsibility https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/legal/submission/review-age-criminal-responsibility-2020

Bajaj, M. (2012). From “time pass” to transformative force: School-based human rights education in Tamil Nadu, India. International Journal of Educational Development, 32(1), 72-80.

Canossa, A., Graham, A., Simmons, A. (2022). Progressing children’s rights and participation: Utilising rights-informed resources to guide policy and practice. Australian Journal of Social Issues, 57(3), 600-626.

Covell, K., Howe, B.R. & Polegato, J.L. (2011). Children’s human rights education as a counter to social disadvantage: a case study from England, Educational Research, 53(2), 193-206.

Jerome, L. & Starkey, H. (2021). Children’s Rights Education in Diverse Classrooms: Pedagogy, principles and practice. Bloomsbury.

Jerome, L. & Starkey, H. (2022). Developing children’s agency within a children’s rights education framework: 10 propositions. International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education, 50(4), 439-451.

Manathunga, C., Davidow, S., Williams, P., Gilbey, K., Bunda, T., Raciti & M. Stanton, S.(2020). Decolonisation through Poetry: Building First Nations’ voice and promoting Truth-Telling. Education as Change, 24    

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). (2023) General comment No.26 on children’s rights and. The environment with a special focus on climate change. https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/general-comment-no-26-2023-childrens-rights-and  

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), (2019) Committee on the Rights of the Child reviews the report of Australia. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/09/committee-rights-child-reviews-report-australia

Osler, A. & Starkey, H. (2005). Changing Citizenship: Democracy and inclusion in education. Open University Press.

Osler, A. (2015). The stories we tell: exploring narrative in education for justice and equality in multicultural contexts. Multicultural Education Review, 7(1-2), 12-25.

Spann, M., Seijo, J.C., Lopez, C.M. (2021). Human and Children’s Rights in the context of education and school mediation. Human Review, 10(1), 144- 154.

Thomas, A. & To, V. 92019). Othering or inclusion? Teaching practice around Asian voices and identities in literature. English in Australia, 54(3), 18-27.  

UNICEF, (2023). UN Committee on the Rights of the Child calls on states to take action in first guidance on Children’s Rights and the environment, with a focus on climate change. https://www.unicef.org.uk/press-releases/un-committee-on-the-rights-of-the-child-calls-on-states-to-take-action-in-first-guidance-on-childrens-rights-and-the-environment-with-a-focus-on-climate-change/