Rights of the Child

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The Moscow Mechanism Expert Report on the Forcible Transfer and Deportation of Ukrainian Children

May 17, 2023

Before Spring 2022, only the real connoisseurs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were familiar with the so-called Moscow Mechanism enabling any OSCE participating State to request the establishment of an ad hoc expert mission to investigate specific questions related to the OSCE human dimension. In the first thirty years of its existence (1991-2021), the mechanism was indeed invoked only nine times. But times have changed and since Spring 2022, there have already been five instances of such an invocation, three of them focused on the events in Ukraine. The first two reports, issued in April and July 2022, provide a general, comprehensive assessment of the violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) and of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed in Ukraine in the first four months of the conflict (see the post on EJILTalk). The third report, published on 4 May 2023, has a much narrower scope, dealing with the forcible transfer of children within…

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Ireland’s Birth Information and Tracing Act: Reconciling the Right to Identity

September 23, 2022

Introduction On the 30th of June 2022 Ireland enacted the Birth Information and Tracing Act – legislation which for the first time in Irish history enshrines a ‘clear right to full birth, early life, care and medical information for all those with questions on their origins’. When the law comes into force on October…

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The Children are the Future – Or Not? Exploring The Complexities of the Relationship between the Rights of Children and Future Generations

May 26, 2022

This piece addresses an issue of growing importance in international human rights law (IHRL): namely, the relationship between children’s rights and future generations’ rights. This matter is particularly pressing in the context of the growing body of standard-setting, scholarship and practice in the areas of climate justice and environmental protection. However, it has also been a longer-standing (albeit…

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A Handy Illusion? Interpretation of the ‘Unlikely to Bring Effective Relief’ Limb of Article 7(e) OPIC by the CRC in Saachi et. al.

November 1, 2021

In an EJIL Talk! blog post, Aoife Nolan laid out the salient aspects of the five inadmissibility decisions in Saachi et al. v. Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey delivered by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on 8 October 2021. Her post focussed on how the Committee handled key…

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Children’s Rights and Climate Change at the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child: Pragmatism and Principle in Sacchi v Argentina

October 20, 2021

On 11 October 2021, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child published its decisions in complaints brought against five states – Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey – by 16 child complainants under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the rights of the Child on a Complaints Procedure (OPIC).

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