[child-rights] Roundtable on the next steps in our research on age-determined child rights

Right to Education Project
for the United Nations Special Rapporteur
www.right-to-education.org

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ROUNDTABLE ON THE NEXT STEPS IN OUR RESEARCH ON AGE-DETERMINED CHILD
RIGHTS

The Right to Education Project (RTE) had a meeting on 26 January 2004 to
review the forthcoming second edition of our publication At what age?
and to discuss the most useful ways for continuing this work.

This roundtable took place in Geneva, it was a closed meeting, organized
in cooperation with the UNESCO International Bureau of Education (IBE),
with the participation of individual scholars and representatives of
Geneva-based organizations. The timing and venue were chosen so as to
enable us to also have a private meeting with the Committee on the
Rights of the Child on 27 January 2004.

Discussions at the roundtable focused on the publication of the second,
enlarged and updated edition of At what age? are school children
employed, married and taken to court? The first edition is available on
this website, you are welcome to sift through it and join us in
improving its usefulness by sending us your suggestions. The second
edition will be available in the last week of April 2004, and it will
cover 157 countries. Following discussions at the roundtable, we shall
expand the introduction by adding comparative charts for the four key
areas - education, employment, marriage and criminal justice. The logic
underpinning our work, namely children should be in school rather than
at work, in marriage or least of all in prison, will lead to expanding
our monitoring of the minimum ages in criminal justice to deprivation of
liberty. At what age? shows that in 125 countries the minimum age of
criminal responsibility is set between 7 and 15, thus for primary school
children.=20

Two additional issues for follow-up were discussed during the
roundtable, the overlap between education and work, and child marriage.
Our data show that in 69 countries legally determined minimum ages for
education and work overlap. Children are right-less having finished
school while below the minimum age for work, or they are allowed to work
while also attending school. There was consensus at the roundtable that
this topic needed further exploration since the school-leaving age tends
to be too low and there is no global strategy for secondary education.
Regarding marriage, discussions went much beyond formally adopted laws
and illustrated the need to investigate and document the influences of
different sources of law (notably, religious and customary) from the
viewpoint of government human rights obligation to ensure protection for
girls. Child-mothers find themselves denied protection as children if
married, or deprived of any legal protection if their children are born
out of wedlock.

The conclusions and recommendations of the roundtable will be reflected
in the second edition of At what age? and in our follow-up projects. Our
sincere thanks to all those who participated, and an invitation to all
those who could not be physically present to provide their input
electronically.

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Right to Education Project
for the United Nations Special Rapporteur
www.right-to-education.org

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