2025 Global Declaration on Advancing Child-Centred Justice
The Declaration on Advancing Child-Centred Justice affirms the collective commitment of governments, civil society, international organizations, and other stakeholders to place children at the heart of justice systems. Rooted in international human rights law and guided by the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the declaration recognizes that justice systems must respond to the specific needs, rights, and experiences of children in contact with the law—as victims, witnesses, or alleged offenders. It calls for child participation, access to effective remedies, and protection from all forms of violence. The declaration outlines a shared vision and actionable commitments to develop inclusive, participatory, and accountable justice systems that are accessible to all children. It also emphasizes the importance of investing in data, intersectoral cooperation, and the meaningful involvement of children and young people in justice reform.
5th World Congress on Justice With Children “Advancing Child-Centred Justice: Preventing and Responding to Violence Affecting Children in Child Justice Systems”
The 5th World Congress on Justice With Children explored the theme "Advancing Child-Centred Justice: Preventing and Responding to Violence Affecting Children in Child Justice Systems," emphasising the critical need to ensure children were at the centre of justice systems.
The World Congress highlighted responses that aimed to prevent escalating violence and address systemic challenges that jeopardised child safety.
Child-Centred Justice
Child-centred justice focuses on ensuring justice systems recognise children as individual rights holders, respecting and implementing all children’s rights as essential to achieving the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 16. Despite progress, contemporary challenges and threats demand that justice institutions operate at ‘their best’ to protect children. Implementing child-centred justice is instrumental to prevent and respond to violence against children in detention, ensuring that their specific needs and rights are addressed while safeguarding their well-being and promoting their rehabilitation. Inspired by this vision, the 2021 Global Declaration on Justice With Children paved the way for the OECD's "Child-Friendly Justice Framework," which champions a justice system that places the needs and rights of children at its heart.
Violence against children (VAC) is a global crisis, affecting all socio-economic, cultural, and ethnic groups. It occurs in families, schools, institutions, and communities, often socially tolerated and not legally addressed. The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened this violence due to increased household stress, economic instability, and limited access to support services.
Global risk factors like rising crime, internet dangers, and organised crime increase children's exposure to violence. Climate change and extreme weather events also heighten their vulnerability through forced displacements. In armed conflict zones, children suffer disproportionately from physical injuries, psychological trauma, and disrupted education.
Exposure to violence impacts children's brain development, causing lasting physical, emotional, and mental harm into adulthood. This includes health problems, disabilities, lower educational attainment, reduced economic development, and increased likelihood of future violence (recidivism). Addressing this issue requires enforcing international laws, establishing accountability, and supporting long-term recovery programs.
Children in contact with the justice system are especially vulnerable to violence due to disadvantaged backgrounds and prior experiences of neglect and abuse. Institutional settings, like detention centres and homes, often lack the resources and trained staff to protect them, leading to inadequate conditions. Social isolation and the stigma of delinquency increase their risk of physical, psychological, and sexual violence. Ineffective monitoring and lack of legal recourse further leave these children unprotected and unable to report abuse, perpetuating a cycle of violence and negatively impacting their development and well-being.
Violence affecting children in the justice system demands urgent attention. It includes physical violence, sexual abuse, emotional harm, and victimization. Intersectional discriminations—based on ethnicity, sexual identity, gender, socio-economic status, and disability—worsen these situations. Modern challenges involve technology in legal processes, raising privacy and fairness concerns, and the impact of trauma on children's developing brains, highlighting the need for trauma-informed practices and mental health support.
Topics
- Child-centred justice policy reform
Implementing child-centred justice is crucial for safeguarding children's rights within justice systems, ensuring their well-being, and promoting rehabilitation.
- Preventing and responding to violence affecting children in the child justice system
Violence against children is widespread across all countries and social contexts, occurring in families, schools, institutions, and communities, often without legal consequences. Children involved in the justice system are particularly vulnerable due to prior abuse and neglect. It is essential to protect children from violence and uphold their rights.
- Ending Child Detention
Ending child detention, including within criminal justice systems, immigration detention, and any other form of deprivation of liberty of children.
- Justice in Times of Crises
Justice in times of crisis, including climate (in)justice for children, child-centered justice, and accountability for children in the context of armed conflict and insecurity, with a focus on reinforcing the resilience of justice systems for children.
- Digital justice-Procedural Safeguards in Child Justice
Reinforcing justice procedural safeguards for children in contact with the law, emphasizing safe and ethical digital justice for children, promoting inclusive and non-discriminatory justice with a focus on gender justice, and prioritizing systemic child participation.
- Neuroscience Approaches in Child Justice Systems
Neuroscience approaches into child justice systems, aiming at bringing a contemporary lens to understanding the diverse impacts and consequences experienced by children within justice systems and how to support them appropriately.
- Community Empowerment
Community empowerment, focusing on legal pluralism including customary justice, and community-based reintegration processes for children in contact with the law, including a particular focus on prevention, restorative justice, and social cohesion.
Policy Brief on Advancing child-centred justice : Preventing and Responding to Violence Affecting Children in Child Justice Systems
This Policy Brief examines the urgent need to prevent and respond to violence affecting children in justice systems worldwide. In the face of global crises and shifting government priorities, the protection of children within these systems is increasingly at risk. Many justice systems struggle to maintain child-centred approaches, while a growing focus on security threatens fundamental children’s rights, particularly for those in conflict with the law.
Access to justice is essential for peaceful and inclusive societies, requiring stable institutions and specialized child-friendly programs. This Policy Brief highlights the systemic and structural violence that children experience as victims, witnesses, and offenders, emphasizing the need for comprehensive protections. It addresses both direct and systemic challenges, offering practical solutions for reform from prevention to reintegration.
The Policy Brief is especially timely, aligning with the development of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment 27 on access to justice and effective remedies for children. While the General Comment takes a broad perspective, this paper focuses specifically on justice-involved children, recognizing access to justice as a key tool to end violence against them. Implementing child-centred justice, as outlined in the OECD Child-Friendly Justice Framework and the 2021 World Congress on Justice With Children, is crucial to safeguarding children’s rights, promoting their well-being, and ensuring their rehabilitation.
Preventing and Responding to Violence Affecting Children in Child Justice Systems: A global Map
The Violence Against Children pro bono project is a compendium analysis of many countries examining where children are experiencing violence within the systems that are meant to protect and serve them. The compendium examines treatment of children in each country in different legal settings. It includes children who have crossed borders for any reason, children in youth justice and juvenile justice systems, children in care, children who are seeking redress for violations of their rights to express themselves, and children seeking general access to courts to courts and other justice mechanisms. The work product in the compendium is not curated; rather, it is a collection of work by hundreds of volunteers working with the Justice in Action Pro bono Sprints from Baker Mckenzie. Volunteers from around the world came together to submit this information based on their research and analysis of laws, media, data and cases pending around the world. Some of the countries are offered in the different UN languages. We invite suggestions, edits and additions by participants in the World Congress to add to the database to improve and amend it to make sure it accurately represents that state of the world of violence against children. A button on every page of the project allows reviewers to submit feedback and amendments at any time in any language. It is hoped to start a conversation on the best ways to overcome violence against children and empower children to help realize their rights no matter where they are in the globe and no matter what systems they meet.