Child Rights Strategic Litigation – Webinar Recording

This webinar continued our exploration of child rights as a strategic litigation tool. The “Climate Change, the Rights of Children, and the Duty of Care” webinar (July 2021) focused on litigation by Anjali Sharma and seven other children who brought a case against Australia’s then Minister for the Environment. They claimed that approval of a new coal mine would violate the government’s duty of care to young people. Successful at first, they lost an appeal and the mine was subsequently approved.

Increasingly, we are seeing children, young people and their advocates bringing such cases before courts and supra-national quasi-judicial bodies. Professor Aoife Nolan (University of Nottingham) explored the implications of the CRC for those carrying out child rights strategic litigation: how can these rights serve as a lens to be turned inwards by those carrying out such litigation to consider the extent to which their practice (rather than simply the aims or impact of such) are consistent with child rights standards?’ Make it 16 is a youth-led campaign in NZ litigating to lower the age when young people can vote to 16 and 17. Campaign representatives, Thomas Pope-Kerr, Cate Tipler, Caitlin Taylor, and Ella Flavell shared their experience of using rights-based litigation.