FAQ’s

 
 

Frequently asked questions

  1. What is CRIN - Child Rights International Network?

  2. What do we do?

  3. How does CRIN support children’s rights activists?

  4. How can I work/ volunteer with CRIN?

  5. Does CRIN provide financial or material assistance?

  6. What are children's rights?

  7. How can I find information on children's rights?

  8. How/where can I report a violation of a child’s rights?

  9. Can I use CRIN’s artwork or other materials?

  10. What are CRIN’s working languages?

1. What is CRIN - Child Rights International Network?

CRIN is an international not-for-profit organisation based in London, UK, which produces new research and thinking on human rights issues, with a focus on children’s rights. We have staff working from London as well as other parts of the world.  

2. What do we do?

What we’re fighting for:

Our immediate role is to fight for a world where children's rights are recognised, respected and enforced, and where every rights violation has a remedy. But we envision a world in which CRIN is no longer necessary and where children have the means and opportunities to fight for their own rights. Until societies, institutions and governments recognise this most urgent reform, we will do our best to fight for their rights by using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as our starting point.

What we do:

We work on many issues, from the survival of the planet for new generations of children, to institutional sexual violence, life imprisonment and the death penalty, children’s right to vote and freedom of expression and more.

We work with international institutions like the UN, as well as governments,professionals, and activists. We undertake legal research and analysis and propose better policies where children’s rights are not being fully realised. We know that the ideas we propose might seem impossible today to many people, but all progress begins with an idea and we do not shy away from controversies or criticism.

3. How does CRIN support children’s rights activists?

CRIN support children’s rights activists by provides information, resources and toolkits on a range of children’s rights issues. In some circumstances and on particular issues, CRIN is able to provide direct support to children’s rights activists, such as legal advocacy support or sharing our processes for how we work on certain issues. We also publish much of our content in a number of languages in order to reach as many activists and organisations as possible.

4. How can I work/ volunteer with CRIN?

Vacancies: All of our current vacancies are posted on our website and on twitter.

Other ways of supporting CRIN: We rely on the contributions of many individuals and organisations from around the world who volunteer their time to support our work. We are particularly interested in working with individuals who and organisations which have expertise in IT and IT security, UN monitoring, and legal and policy research. We also occasionally work on specific projects with volunteer translators, particularly those who speak Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish.

If you have any ideas or skills you think would be useful to CRIN and you are willing to offer some of your time, we would be happy to hear from you. Please get in touch via contact@crin.org.

5. Does CRIN provide financial or material assistance?

CRIN is not a funding organisation. We are therefore unable to provide any financial or material assistance to other organisations.

6. What are children's rights?

Children’s rights are human rights. All humans are inherently born with fundamental rights and freedoms, and children must be treated with respect and dignity, not because they are ‘the future’ or the ‘adults of tomorrow’, but because they are human beings today.

On account of their special status and specific vulnerabilities as children, they also have specific rights to help protect them from the threats, exclusions and discrimination. These rights are embodied in international law in the Convention on the Rights of the Children (CRC) and its complementary treaties covering child sexual exploitation, armed conflict, and a complaints mechanism allowing violations of children’s rights can be challenged at the UN.

7. How can I find information on children's rights?

8. How/where to report a violation of a child’s rights?

If the violation relates to a child who is at risk of harm or abuse, you should report directly to the police, local authority/child protection services, or to a national child helpline, which can advise and/or take action in coordination with the relevant agencies in your country.

If you are a child or young person and need to speak to someone, you can call helplines in many countries. Most of them are completely confidential, but if you are worried about them telling someone, just tell them before you talk that you want the conversation to be confidential, or check on their website. A list of child helplines is available on our website here, or on the Child Helplines International website.

If you are an adult and wish to report an infringement that relates to the actions of the State, or to a deeper structural and systemic problem, you could consider making a complaint to a children's ombudsperson - this is a public office headed by an independent public official that receives complaints from the public about injustice and maladministration by government agencies. You can find a global list of children’s ombudspersons here. If you are based in Europe you can find a list of children's ombudspersons by country on the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children.

You may also wish to report infringements to local children's and human rights NGOs. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child accepts reports from NGOs and children when it conducts its reviews of State compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - you can find useful information on this process on Child Rights Connect’s website here.

Additionally, if your country is a party to the CRC’s Optional Protocol on a communications procedure (check here), children who have been the victim of a violation of the CRC, or their representatives, can submit complaints directly to the Committee on the Rights of the Child - but you are first required to exhaust domestic remedies by first taking legal action in your own country (see our toolkit on the CRC complaints mechanism). While going to court can be expensive and time-consuming, you may be able to find support from local legal aid organisations, pro bono lawyers, university law clinics, human rights organisations, etc. On our website you can find country-specific reports on access to justice, a directory of children's rights legal clinics in the European Union, and a directory of children's rights organisations which you can filter by country, as well as several guides on legal systems and children's rights.

9. Can I use CRIN’s artwork or other materials?

All CRIN content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.  CRIN encourages the personal and educational use of all of its publications and grants permission for their reproduction in this capacity where proper credit is given in good faith. No material produced by CRIN may be modified unless consent is given in writing. No material produced by CRIN may be re-used for commercial gain unless consent is given in writing.

10. What are CRIN’s working languages?

CRIN has staff who speak Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish. We welcome enquiries in those languages to our public enquiries inbox at contact@crin.org. At the moment, our website is predominantly in English, but our archived site has a vast selection of materials in all our working languages.