The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and its partners have published a Compendium, Ensuring the child’s right to be heard and to participate in legal proceedings: Strategies and good practices. The Compendium aims to support legal professionals, policymakers, and civil society in ensuring the child’s right to be heard and to participate in legal proceedings, fostering more child-sensitive proceedings.
Across Europe, around 2.5 million children are involved in legal proceedings annually. Children may come into contact with proceedings in various contexts—through civil, administrative, and criminal proceedings—including cases where they are not parties, but where decisions may still impact their rights.
The Compendium emphasizes that children are not merely subjects of protection but rights-holders, entitled to exercise their rights within fair proceedings. Because of their age, appropriate and enhanced procedural safeguards for children are an integral part of both their right to have their best interests taken as a primary consideration and their right to be heard and to participate. However, many children—especially those with specific needs and vulnerabilities—face barriers to effective participation.
The Compendium outlines relevant international human rights law and standards on procedural rights and guarantees for children, including access to legal assistance, legal aid, information, interpretation and communication support, guardianship, the right to a fair hearing and access to court, and an effective remedy.
The Compendium also identifies gaps in implementation across Austria, the Czech Republic, Malta, the Netherlands and Slovakia. It promotes the exchange of information, strategies, and good practices among professionals from different legal fields, such as criminal, asylum and migration-related, and custody, care and child protection proceedings, and contributes to the development of legal systems that are better suited to children.
The Compendium concludes with recommendations for professionals, civil society and policymakers:
- Training: ensuring mandatory, continuous, specialized training for all professionals involved in legal proceedings concerning children;
- Multidisciplinary approach: encouraging collaboration among professionals in a particular legal proceeding;
- Empowering children: supporting direct communication between children and decision-makers in proceedings that concern them, where appropriate;
- Data collection: monitoring children’s participation to inform policy and practice.
Download the guide
Background
The Be Seen Be Heard – Empowering Child VOICEs in Legal Proceedings (VOICE) project aims to promote the effective realization of children’s right to be heard and participate in judicial proceedings across Austria, the Czech Republic, Malta, the Netherlands, and Slovakia, in alignment with Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child. Led by a consortium of partners—the ICJ, Nederlands Juristen Comité Voor de Mensenrechten, Forum for Human Rights, aditus foundation, and Österreichische Juristenkommission—the initiative focuses on enhancing the expertise of professionals involved in legal proceedings concerning children, facilitating the sharing of good practices and raising awareness about the need for a child-centred approach in legal proceedings.
The Compendium draws on the findings of a baseline study and reflects lessons learned from transnational workshops and webinars organized as part of the project on (1) the role of the representative and the child’s right to be heard in legal proceedings, (2) the participation of migrant and refugee children in asylum and migration-related proceedings, and (3) the participation of children with disabilities in legal proceedings.
Contact
Karolína Babická, Senior Legal Adviser: karolina.babicka@icj.org
