A Global Study of Indipendent Human Rights insitutions for Children - Innocenti Pubblications
Since the 1990s, independent human rights institutions for children have emerged globally as influential bodies promoting children in public decisionmaking and discourse. There are now more than 200 at work in more than 70 countries. In the vast majority of cases their creation has followed state
ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which is core to their operation.
These institutions are defined as public bodies with an independent status, whose mandate is to monitor, defend and promote human rights, with a focus
on children’s rights. They take a variety of forms – they may be institutions exclusively focused on children or institutions with a broader mandate that have
an identifiable department dedicated to specific child-focused activities. They go by many different names: ombudsperson, child commissioner, child advocate,
child rights or human rights commission in English; défenseur des enfants or médiateur in French; defensoría or procuraduría in Spanish; and many other
designations in other languages.
Unicef
2013
