Fifteen years ago CRIN developed from an information hub to an advocacy and campaigning organisation (see CRIN’s history), but nothing we’ve achieved since then is exclusively attributable to us alone. This reflects the collective nature of advocacy and campaigning, and the realisation that impact is rarely brought about single-handedly. As you’ll see from the examples below, what we’ve accomplished collectively with our partners can range from sparking an idea or changing the narrative, getting harmful laws abolished or strengthening national campaigns, setting a new trend or standing up to powerful institutions. And key to our approach is that we don’t seek out quick wins, but systemic change — or rather, to influence the conditions that can lead to change and always aiming at the root causes of a problem.
We will soon be publishing more details on how we measure and evaluate impact, and why we’re embedding anti-oppression practices into how we do this. Stay tuned!
CRIN in a snapshot
Key highlights from our journey so far.
What sparked the flame that started the journey?
Filling an information gap in the children’s rights community
When CRIN was established, it was fundamentally about information. In 1995, it launched the first international database on the Convention on the Rights of the Child, compiling the essential information needed by the children’s rights community. This work later formed the start of the Treaty Bodies database hosted by OHCHR.
Publishing accessible versions of civil society reports
Continuing the commitment to making information about the international human rights mechanisms freely accessible, in 1998 CRIN and the NGO Group for the CRC (now Child Rights Connect) published all of the alternative reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child for the first time. To this day, the database remains the only complete record of civil society reports to the CRC prior to 2015.
Launching a directory of more than 3,000 children’s rights organisations
In 2003, CRIN launched its directory of children’s rights organisations, which would develop to include more than 3,000 organisations working around the world. At a time when much of the world had minimal internet access, the database was the only online presence for many organisations working on children’s rights and an opportunity for this community to connect with partners in almost every country
Getting the UN to create a complaints mechanism for children
CRIN was part of the coalition to establish a complaints mechanism for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - at the time, the only major human rights treaty not to have one. Four years later, the UN finally adopted the mechanism in 2011, with 48 States ratifying it by 2021. The mechanism now allows children and their representatives to bring a complaint against their State over a rights violation, providing that the State has ratified the mechanism.
The top child rights jobs lacked transparency - we pushed for change
In response to the lack of transparency in how the key roles in children’s rights were filled, we started off urging the UN Secretary-General to make the appointment process for UNICEF’s Executive Director open, transparent and focused on candidates’ children’s rights credentials. This was the first of several roles to come under scrutiny, and we were not the only ones concerned: 278 organisations signed our letter to the UN chief, and soon after, then-Executive Director Ann Veneman announced her resignation.
What path did we then choose to go down?
Governments abolish the inhuman sentencing of children thanks to collective efforts
We launched a campaign with our partners to stop children from being sentenced to death, life imprisonment or physical punishment. While the campaign was active, 28 countries banned all forms of corporal punishment, five abandoned life imprisonment and three abolished the death penalty for children. During these years, we also worked on individual cases of children sentenced to death to ensure their sentences were commuted or overturned.
Supporting advocates to use the law to advance children’s rights
Recognising that children’s rights NGOs needed to use stronger forms of campaigning, we launched a series of workshops on how to use the law to challenge children’s rights violations. Over four years, we worked with national campaigners in Turkey, South Asia, East Africa and Eastern Europe to identify weak, harmful or missing laws and, in response, devise legal advocacy strategies for advancing children’s rights. Some workshop participants later received funding to implement their strategies.
Where did this path lead us to?
Dropping ‘charitable’ photos of children for critical artwork sets a new trend
We stopped using photographs of children across our work to move away from the use of images of smiling or starving children to evoke pity and inspire charity that was common in the NGO sector. This decision was rooted in our motto ‘rights, not charity’. Instead, we now use original artwork that confronts why children’s rights are violated, explaining why this is important and exhibiting the illustrations in venues around the world. We noticed that more and more organisations have since followed suit.
We stood by survivors of sexual abuse and the media played its role
Marking the start of CRIN’s work on institutional sexual abuse of children, we published a global report challenging impunity within the Catholic Church to coincide with UN’s review of the Holy See’s children’s rights record. It would lead us to produce the first-ever investigation into clergy abuse in Latin America in 2019, which covered survivors’ key demands and helped to shift the media’s attention in 13 countries from case-by-case coverage to recognising the systemic nature of the issue.
The UN invites CRIN to help cement children’s rights across its work
After years of keeping track of how well - or not - the UN addressed the full range of children’s rights in its monitoring work, we published the first analysis to encourage the permanent presence of children’s rights across UN human rights bodies. The following year we were invited to present our findings directly to the UN committees covering civil and political rights; economic, social and cultural rights; and the rights of migrant workers; and to draft child rights indicators for the disability rights committee.
What discoveries were made and shared along the way?
The first-ever global ranking on children’s access to justice prompts legal reform
The research, which was produced with the support of hundreds of lawyers and NGOs worldwide, laid out the extent to which children in every single country can use the law to challenge violations of their rights. The research was picked up by media across 80 countries, prompted legal reform and proposals for reform, and cemented the issue of children’s access to justice across UN bodies.
A first look at children’s rights issues in assisted reproduction
CRIN was one of the first children’s rights organisations to look at the impacts of assisted reproduction on the rights of children, producing a policy paper to encourage discussion beyond adults’ right to found a family. We contributed to international efforts to build standards that respect children’s rights, which eventually led to the Verona Principles in 2021 on the protection of the rights of the child born through surrogacy.
CRIN inherits the campaign to end recruitment of children by the UK army
When CRIN’s long-standing partner Child Soldiers International closed down in 2019, CRIN took over the campaign to end the recruitment of children by the UK armed forces - currently the last country in Europe to recruit from age 16. Our research on the army’s unethical recruitment practices made front-page news, and we continue to work with journalists, politicians, former recruits and their families to expose child abuse in military training.
Did we take a moment to pause and reflect on the path we were on? What answers did we find in the silence?
The CRIN Code sets out our vision for the future
We adopted The CRIN Code: our values, principles and vision for a rights-respecting world and how we intend to get there. The inspiration was the rebellion-inducing book Be More Pirate: Or How to Take On the World and Win by entrepreneur Sam Conniff, whose follow-up How to: Be More Pirate featured CRIN as a case study.
How did we find our way back onto the path? Or pave a new path; or a path less travelled?
Setting the foundations to make children’s environmental rights enforceable
Prompted by the sheer scale of the global youth-led climate movement, we realised that children’s access to justice was an essential part of their fight, because for children’s environmental rights to be more than a promise, there must be a way to enforce them. Fast forward to 2022, we launched the first-ever global review of children’s access to environmental justice, which we’ll be using alongside partners worldwide to push for necessary reform.
What do we see up ahead on the horizon?
Promoting children’s climate voices in the human rights arena
With the climate crisis and its impact on children’s rights growing exponentially, we acted on what the youth climate movement needed: solidarity. We welcomed a group of Climate Advisers, all activists aged 18 and under, to shape CRIN’s climate justice strategy and support their involvement at events on school strikers’ rights,access to climate justice at COP26 and in various UN spaces, and by publishing a series of articles written by the Advisers themselves for the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
We welcome a new sister organisation
In response to the increasingly difficult funding environment for small NGOs and a desire to explore more creative campaigning, CRIN the think tank got a new creative sister: Berlin-based The Rights Studio, a social enterprise experimenting with creative ideas and communicating through art, whose launch we marked with a month-long series of events.
CRIN’s journey of transformation continues. Stay tuned for our plans for a more holistic approach to impact!