Advancing Child Rights Strategic Litigation
Structured over three years, the project will deepen practice and research collaboration synergies between academic and advocacy partners in the area of child rights strategic litigation (CRSL).
Project website
Our aim
Child rights strategic litigation (CRSL) – defined as litigation that seeks to bring about positive legal and social change in terms of children’s enjoyment of their rights – is a pressing topic in advocacy and academic circles. Given its increased deployment as a tool for advancing children’s rights by a range of different actors, it is vital to engage effectively with the challenges and opportunities presented by CRSL.
Focused on the development, implementation, impact assessment and critique of CRSL from a child rights perspective, this project will contribute directly to strengthening the capacity of such litigation to deliver on children’s rights globally. It will do so by expanding academic engagement with CRSL, while bringing a number of key CRSL cases before judicial and quasi-judicial bodies. In this way, the proposed project seeks to effect concrete change via a practical methodology where academia and activism meet in the service of children’s rights. As such, the project entails a continuous exchange between research and practice directed towards concrete real-world impact.
Project updates
The project was launched with an online event on 23 September 2020. You can watch the recording here:
Project partners
Academic partners include, the Centre for Child Law (University of Pretoria), the Human Rights Institute (University of Deusto) and the follow-up programme of the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty based at the Global Campus of Human Rights (Venice). Civil society organisations partners include the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, the Child Rights International Network and Impact Law for Social Justice.
The project is coordinated by the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre.
The project comes under the auspices of the Global Campus-Right Livelihood Foundation Partnership Agreement.