Children’s Rights

Nelson Mandela said it best: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children”. We should continuously ask ourselves: what can we do to improve the wellbeing of children and steady their harmonious developmental path? My short answer is to embrace the rights of children in a comprehensive and integrated way by ensuring that every component of our societies, from the amorphous governmental entity all the way down to the individual citizen, respects the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

We all have a part to play and there are legions of child rights advocates, famous and anonymous, pursuing this goal. I try as well by… leveraging my membership on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, supporting initiatives large and small (especially when they are child-led), visiting and lobbying stakeholders around the world, and contributing to the indispensable work of civil society.

International Child rights Advocacy

There are many forms of child rights advocacy. One that I relish in particular is to leverage my membership on the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and to travel to many far away lands and communities to support the work of civil society and child human rights defenders and learn from their unyielding and oftentimes creative initiatives. Here is a sample of recent visits and some highlights:

  • Ireland (the many facets of the work of the Ombudsman for children),
  • Israel, West Bank and Gaza (with a focus of child participation and mental health),
  • Australia (discrimination against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people),
  • Kenya and South Africa (child participation),
  • Colombia (restorative justice and children facing community violence),
  • The Philippines (the fantastic work of CRC Asia and meeting with street children in Manilla).
The Beat Goes On!

child helpline international

I am really proud to be involved in promoting Child Helpline International. CHI is a collective impact organization with more than 150 child helpline members from over 130 countries and territories around the world. We coordinate information, viewpoints, knowledge and data from our members, from our partners and from other external sources. This exceptional resource is used to support child protection systems globally, regionally and nationally.
Every year, child helpline members around the world field more than 13 million individual calls, and provide counselling services to around 3 million children and young people.
Key message: “Every child has a voice. No child should be left unheard“.

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2024 Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child

In 1923, Eglantyne Jebb, a visionary and headstrong Englishwoman, wrote the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child as a mission for the organization that would become Save the Children. A year later, in 1924, it was adopted by the League of Nations as the first intergovernmental child rights document. History was made…

To mark 100 years of child rights and to update the text with issues children face today, we decided to compose a new 2024 Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child. Learn about the incredible collaboration I had with the City of Geneva (and its child-friendly Mayor Christina Kitsos) and several leading child rights organizations by visiting the website.

And while you are at it: become a signatory for eternity of the 2024 Declaration on the Rights of the Child… translated into 40 languages and counting!

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Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC)

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child urges States to ensure that all professionals working with and for children are knowledgeable about children’s rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its fundamental principles. 

It didn’t take much convincing for us to innovate by trying to reach as many professionals around the world as possible with a free Massive Open Online Course (in English): Children’s Human Rights – An Interdisciplinary Introduction. It is accessible on Coursera!

And, given the success of the formula, we decided along with Terre des hommes to create a second free child rights MOOC for professionals working with and for children in Switzerland… in the country’s main national languages (German, French and Italian). Call it a MOOC.ch and all Swiss professionals ought to sign up to take it!

Contact Me​

Do not hesitate to reach out for an appointment.

philip.jaffe@unige.ch
+41 (0) 76 3900852
Philip D. Jaffé
5 avenue du Mail,
1205 Geneva, Switzerland