Exploring Protection Rights within UNCRC

Scotland has incorporated the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots Law, within the limits of devolution.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was created in recognition of the fact that children require special protections for their rights due to their status as children.

While making no explicit reference to children from armed forces families, all its provisions apply to them as a group who experience greater risk of their rights not being promoted.

Following the incorporation of UNCRC into Scots Law, we published our children’s rights report, titled, ‘It’s not just their job, it’s our whole lives’.

The report outlines how the rights of children and young people from armed forces families are affected across the three categories of protection, provision, and participation.

In this first article, we take a look at Protection rights.

Protection Rights Summarised

Protection rights ensure children are protected from actions that threaten their dignity, survival or development.

These actions are, in the main, carried out by adults and institutions.

These rights include:

• Article 2 – Non-discrimination.
• Article 9 – To not be separated from their parents.
• Article 16 – To be protected from arbitrary or unlawful interference with their privacy, family home or correspondence.
• Article 3 –  For all decisions made about them to have their best interests as a primary consideration.

Children and young people frequently express that separation is one of the most difficult aspects of having a serving parent (1). Children and young people also report that service life can impact on their right to privacy and that they can feel discriminated against because of their parent’s service. The impact differs depending on the child’s age and experiences.

There may be a perceived clash between the best interests of children from armed forces families and national security and the needs of the services. When some sacrifice is required, the distribution of rights should be fair (2). Children and young people from forces families tell us that it does not feel fair and they do not feel heard.

When children’s best interests conflict with other interests and a suitable compromise cannot be found – as is the case with children from forces families and the service-related separations they experience – then in weighing up the rights of all concerned, the child’s interest must have a high priority and not just one of several considerations

References:

(1) – Children’s Commissioner (2018) | Kin and Country: Growing Up as an Armed Forces Child.

(2) – Theobold (2019) UN Convention of the rights of the Child: “Where are we a in recognising children’s rights in early childhood, three decades on?” | International Journal of Early Childhood.

Our recomendations

We urge decision-makers to review all policies and guidelines relating to postings and extended residential training courses, to ensure that there is direct instruction to consider the impact on children, and that any possible mitigations are considered and implemented.

More needs to be done to educate the wider community about the strengths that children and young people from forces families bring to new settings and the challenges to their protection rights they face.

More needs to be done to identify mitigations for the effects of separation, discrimination and breach of privacy for all children, to promote their best interests.

Find out more about protection rights, UNCRC as well as our rights report and recommendations via the following downloads.