The Centre for Children’s Rights and Family Law, established in 2018, serves as a focal point for the wide range of research, teaching and outreach activity taking place in the areas of children’s rights and family law at the School of Law at University College Cork.

The aims of the Centre are to:

• undertake leading international research and advancing the fields of children’s rights and family law
• provide an excellent research environment and culture for current and PhD students and Postdoctoral researchers to develop their knowledge, skills and profile in children’s rights and family law
• enhance the impact of the University’s research and engage and shape non-academic bodies in child rights and family law to deliver legal, policy-relevant and social impact.

The Centre, part of the UCC School of Law, hosts the only specialist LLM degree in this area of law in Ireland and the UK: the LLM in Children’s Rights and Family Law.
This program contains a number of modules on children’s rights, in particular: International Children’s Rights, Juvenile Justice and Children’s Rights Law in Practice. It also includes a Child Law Clinic and a Family Law Clinic, through which staff and postgraduate students support litigation and engage in advocacy work.
The Centre also has a number of PHD students working on diverse aspects of children's rights (diversion and children in detention, right to identity and assisted human reproduction, children and school expulsion, non-violent education, children trafficked into forced labour for armed groups).