Articles 3, 12 & 16
Three articles children in Norway have identified as the most important in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Children’s rights when interacting with adults
Most people in Norway have heard of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, knowledge from children shows that, in many situations, children’s rights are not upheld in practice. Professionals are more often trained in sector-specific legislation – such as the Education Act, health legislation, the Children Act or the Child Welfare Act – and have received less training in how the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child should be applied in practice.
ChangeFactory works to ensure that Articles 3, 12 and 16 are incorporated into the sector-specific legislation governing systems and services for children, and that regulations and practice are updated to comply with children’s rights under the Convention.
The State is also obliged, under Article 42 of the Convention, to make the provisions of the Convention widely known to both adults and children.
Articles 3, 12 and 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child describe how adults in schools, kindergartens, support services, the police and the justice system should work with children. These articles apply to all children under the age of 18 in all actions and decisions concerning them. There is a strong correlation between these rights and advice given directly by groups of children about how adults need to work with them in order for adults’ actions and decisions to be safe and helpful.
Articles 3, 12 & 16:
Before the best interests of the child can be assessed, these rights must first be upheld:
- Children have the right to sufficient and understandable information as a basis for being able to express their views freely (CRC Article 12).
- Children have the right to express their views freely and safely in all matters affecting them (CRC Article 12, Section 104 of the Norwegian Constitution).
- Children have the right to respect for their privacy, and to be informed and given an opportunity to express their views before information about them is shared (CRC Article 16, ECHR Article 8, Section 102 of the Norwegian Constitution).
The best interests of the child can be assessed once these rights have been upheld (CRC Article 3, Section 104 of the Norwegian Constitution). In assessing the best interests of the child, the child’s own views must be a central consideration.
Knowledge from children about how adults need to work with them
A recurring message from many children is that adults need to work closely together with them. When something is going to be done or decided concerning a child:
- Children need understandable and useful information.
- Children must be able to speak freely and safely.
- Adults must agree with children on what can be shared, and children must have the opportunity to express their views before information is shared.
- Children must be given the opportunity to express their views throughout the entire process.
- Children must always be involved in decisions that concern them.
Why ChangeFactory works with Articles 3, 12 and 16
For years, children ChangeFactory met across Norway had asked why they were not given enough information before decisions about them were made, and why adults did not have to listen to children’s views before assessing what was in their best interests.
Many children also wondered why systems were designed in such a way that, once a child had told something to an adult, adults could simply discuss this information among themselves without the child knowing.
Some also asked why laws and guidelines in Norway did not prevent decisions from being made that, in reality, were not in their best interests. Many were also “really fed up” with adults saying that they had made a decision in the child’s best interests when the decision had actually made things worse for the child.
Young people with lived experience had been presenting knowledge from children for years
Since 2004, ChangeFactory has gathered experiences and advice from children. In 2009, systematic work began to build a knowledge centre that could provide Norway with knowledge children have about public systems and services. Surveys and knowledge-gathering projects were carried out with children who had experience of health services, child welfare services, schools, institutions, the police, the justice system and the County Governor.
The experiences and advice gathered through these surveys are summarised as knowledge directly from children. ChangeFactory gathers and communicates this knowledge, contributes to professional development and provides advice to public authorities and politicians. Children and young people are invited to participate as “Pros” – young people with lived experience – and present knowledge from children themselves in education and training programmes and in dialogue with professionals, politicians and public authorities, both nationally and regionally.
Connecting knowledge from children with children’s rights
From time to time, lawyers contacted ChangeFactory after the Pros had presented knowledge from children. They wanted to understand, in practical terms, the challenges the children were describing. In some of these discussions, lawyers pointed to how the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the General Comments of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child describe the rights children have when interacting with adults.
This led to work with a stronger focus on children’s human rights. It quickly became clear that there were many strong parallels between knowledge from children and children’s procedural rights: children must receive sufficient and understandable information; they must be able to speak safely; they must be informed before something they have said or done is shared with others; and their views must be taken seriously in decisions that affect them.
