Events/Education
Speaker: Dr Nessa Lynch, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, Wellington
5 September 2017, 1.00-2.00 pm - venue to be confirmed
International standards for children’s rights are increasingly influential on domestic practice. The most widely applicable is the Convention and its associated standards, but regional standards such as the Council of Europe’s Child Friendly Justice Guidelines have also been developed. There is by now considerable academic and practice on the application of such standards in national youth justice systems. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of this literature focusses on the child who is in conflict with the law; the child as suspect, defendant or offender. There is, rightly, much discussion of how such children may often be more appropriately categorised as victims themselves, as a result of parental or state abuse and neglect, mental and physical health problems, lack of education, and poverty.
Nonetheless, there has been much less consideration of the application of international standards to another group of children who are affected by the youth justice system: the children who are victims of crime. Cases of offending by child perpetrator against a child victim, particularly in serious sexual offending cases, are amongst the most difficult issues which a youth justice system must resolve, and raise complex questions of balancing of rights and interests.
This article seeks to develop a conceptual framework for the rights and interests of the child victim of child-perpetrated offending. What guidance can international standards offer? How do child-specific standards such as the Convention interact with other international standards such as the victims’ rights standards? How do children’s rights standards conceptualise the public interest and the child victim’s interest safety. Whose best interests?
Nessa is originally from Ireland and a graduate of the National University of Ireland, University College Cork (BCL, LLM) and the University of Otago, New Zealand (PhD). She is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research is broadly based on the interaction between the individual and the state in the criminal justice system, with a particular interest in children’s rights. She is the author of a monograph Youth Justice in New Zealand, which examines theory, legislation and practice in the New Zealand youth justice system. She has published journal articles nationally and internationally on youth justice, children’s rights and restorative justice.She is a regular contributor to youth justice policy and practice, advises government and non-governmental organisations on children’s rights in justice proceedings, and is a member of the Youth Court Education Committee of the Institute of Judicial Studies of New Zealand.
Speaker: Dr Gillean McCloskey, University of Edinburgh
2 October 2017, 1.00-2.00pm - venue to be confirmed
Details to follow
Speaker: Professor Phil Jones, Institute of Education, UCL
6 December 2017, 4.00-6.00pm
Recent years have revealed new perspectives on the complexity of children and adults trying to work together in research. On the one hand, good intentions about children's participation rights, or user involvement can dissolve or become distorted. On the other, we are increasing our insight into positive ways in which children and adults engage in the process. This presentation is offered in the spirit of adding to such insight. The paper will report on a pilot, funded by LankellyChase, which offered the opportunity for children and young people experiencing disadvantage to train as researchers and to develop projects to explore their own, and other children’s, experiences and views. It involved the formation of a group of children as a reference group for the pilot and collaboration between University College London and four different partner organisations working with children experiencing disadvantage. The young researchers received training, devised research to explore the theme of disadvantage based on their own responses to the term, were supported in implementing the research and made decisions about how they wanted their findings to be disseminated. The presentation will include material from the four projects and review the work of the pilot. The analysis will combine concerns drawn from the new sociology of childhood’s response to participation and participation rights with theoretical perspectives on collaboration, particularly Huxham’s (2003) theory of ‘collaborative advantage’.