The impact of children’s rights education and research on policy development

18-19 January 2018
Uni Bastions, University of Geneva, Switzerland

Rationale

The conference aims to carry on the dialogue on the role and impact of children’s rights education and research on policy development between academia and policy-makers. The conference theme allows bringing together perspectives from academia and professional partners both on children’s rights policy development as well as on academic education and research.

Since the mid-1990s, countries have experienced a significant evolution in their policies dedicated to the implementation of children’s rights. This evolution is mainly characterized by two factors: first, the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989 included a broadening of the notion of children’s well-being and has led to a higher attention given to the fulfilment of children’s human rights. Second, policy developments have witnessed an increased endeavour to favour so-called evidence-based policy. Both aspects are concerned with adopting a human rights approach in the development of policies with the intention of making effective decisions for the implementation of children’s human rights, based on the transparent use of scientific knowledge.

Over the last decades, actors from different sectors have asked for heightened collaboration and partnership between academia and policy-making. Policy makers as well as advocates in favour of strengthening the implementation of the normative framework on children’s rights have been asking researchers to provide support for establishing effective children’s rights policies. Academics have been responding, in various ways and with different degrees of intensity, to these demands, but have also started to look more critically at the normative children’s rights framework itself. They have argued that scientific research not only has a responsibility to respond to demands emanating from policy or advocacy, but have also asked policy makers and advocates to consider findings stemming from their basic research.

To take stock and further examine these developments, this conference focuses on three main areas of discussion:

1. Policy making needs to be able to rely on robust scientific data and knowledge in order to develop effective and efficient evidence-based policies to implement the children’s rights normative framework;
2. Academia is increasingly asked to ensure that its education and research programmes resonate with the social and political necessities of their time and that their research findings have sustainable impact;
3. Knowledge brokering emerges as processes that aim to facilitate the transfer and transformation of scientific knowledge into operational policies, as well as to make academia aware of current social problems.