14th UN CONGRESS ON CRIME PREVENTION AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE

The Global Initiative on Justice with Children is being represented during the 14th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice held from 7 – 12 March 2021 in Kyoto – Japan under the overall theme “Advancing crime prevention, criminal justice and the rule of law: towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda”. The UN ‘Crime Congress’, held once every five years since 1955, adopts a political declaration that sets the crime prevention and criminal justice agenda for the next five years.

This year, The Kyoto Crime Congress has been held in a hybrid format, with a significant online participation from around the world. The Global Initiative on justice with children has contributed to discussions in various sessions and ‘ancillary meetings’ (side events) as detailed below, and has coordinated a pledge from the civil society organisations.

This high level meeting has examined those challenges in supporting justice system reform to improve compliance with international child rights standards and develop resilience to ensure access to justice for children towards peaceful, just, and inclusive societies.

Worldwide, children are victims of different forms of violence due to multiple forms of crises: economic, geopolitical and more recently a global health emergency. These crises increase the vulnerability of children as well as the systems designed initially to support them. This includes justice systems which have to adapt to continue delivering services in the best interests of children in adverse circumstances, preventing and responding to serious forms of violence perpetrated against children. This complex situation could, notwithstanding, offer a new opportunity to rethink child justice systems in order to increase their resilience to different types of crises, as well as to ensure evidence-based and child rights compliant reforms. In this context, the main challenge currently remains to support justice system reform to comply better with international child rights standards and to develop a certain form of resilience to face those society changes. This event has been attended by

– the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG) on Violence against Children,

– the Director of the Division for Operations from The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,

– the Executive Director of Inspiring Children’s Futures, and founding Director of CELCIS (the Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection),

– the Executive Director of Pro Bono Practice from Baker & McKenzie,

– the Access to Justice Programme of the Terre des hommes Foundation, and representatives from
the International Association of Youth and Family Magistrates and

– Penal Reform International.

See the UN Crime Congress webpage : here 

See the concept note and programme here.

Since the beginning of 2021, The Global Initiative on Justice with children is leading an initiative followed by 18 international organisations which ended up in the publication of the “Pledge on Child Rights and Criminal Justice” . With this pledge, non for profit organisation which attends the Kyoto Crime Congress recall UN Members States to adopt a child rights-based approach to criminal justice policy and practice.

Click to see the Pledge in English and Spanish.