The EU has an extensive body of legislation on chemicals, but it does not do enough to tackle the impacts harmful substances can have on children’s rights. Hazardous chemicals pose significant risks to children’s health, their environment and ultimately their rights. Children have a right to be protected from this by the EU and by Member States. With this project, we will advocate for EU chemical laws and policies that better protect children’s rights.
Why are we working on this project?
Research increasingly links childhood exposure to harmful chemicals to a range of diseases that manifest not only later in life (e.g. cancer, diabetes, and impaired brain function), but also at earlier ages (e.g. premature birth as well as cognitive and endocrine disorders). This violates children’s right to life, survival and development, their right to health, and their right to an adequate standard of living and a healthy environment. Moreover, children, their communities and their families have no say in decisions about which hazardous substances they are exposed to on a daily basis.
EU institutions have committed to always making children’s best interest a priority. Yet, a wide range of chemicals particularly harmful to children are still on the EU market. EU policies also have major shortcomings, ranging from a lack of accountability mechanisms in cases of chemical pollution, to not enough restrictions on hazardous substances.
Why now?
Since 2020, the EU has been conducting a review of several key EU laws. This review is part of the EU Chemical’s Strategy for Sustainability. It is a long-overdue opportunity to address the shortcomings of the current laws, and to improve them so that children can grow up in a clean, healthy and toxic-free environment.
With the revision of several laws regulating the use of chemicals both in general and in specific products such as toys and cosmetics, the EU has the opportunity to strengthen children’s protection against harmful substances.
What do we want to achieve?
We want to ensure that decision makers take children’s rights into primary consideration across all EU laws that relate to harmful chemicals.
EU laws must guarantee that all children are protected against exposure to hazardous substances, such as endocrine disruptors, nanomaterials, forever pollutants and pesticides.
By raising awareness on harmful chemicals, we want the EU to rethink the way chemicals are being assessed and restricted, and to improve access to information on these substances. With a better understanding of the impacts hazardous chemicals have on children's rights, we are hopeful to see hazardous substances prohibited and to see improved compliance with laws and better protection of children’s rights across the EU.
While this project focuses on the EU because of current opportunities, we aim to expand our focus on this crucial topic, including to address major issues such as tackling the export of hazardous substances by the EU to other countries globally.
What have we done so far, and how?
Over the years, CRIN has been sharing its human rights expertise with EU institutions and encouraging decision makers to better consider children’s rights across legislation on chemicals. Since 2023 we have been working on several pivotal EU revisions and initiatives.
Our report and manifesto on children's rights and exposure to hazardous chemicals, explaining current EU chemicals laws allow severe children’s rights violations and the EU legislation can stop this.
Our position on the proposal for a regulation on the Sustainable Use of Plant Protection Products (SUR), presenting how to ensure that children’s rights are protected from harmful pesticides.
Our position on the proposal for a Toy Safety Regulation (TSR) to make sure that the legislation on toy safety best upholds children’s rights.
Our reply (summarised version) to the EU public consultation on the ban of export of hazardous chemicals outside of the European Union outlining the dangers of the current double standard of protection against harmful substances.
Our reply to the EU public consultation on the restriction of forever pollutants (PFAS).
Because we believe that change can only happen when we come together with others, we have been developing our network both at the UN and the EU levels. We are members of the EDC-Free Europe coalition and recently joined the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) where we are also part of the current Toxic Free Future campaign. We also work in close collaborations with other NGOs. For instance, we are cooperating with PAN Europe to make the case for the EU to review its Pesticides regulation to better uphold children’s rights.
This work is closely linked to the current research project on access to justice for children’s environmental rights. The country reports include some questions which relate to the toxic issue, looking at how national legislations around the world protect (or fail to protect) children’s environmental rights.
Since 2016, CRIN has produced various materials, raising awareness of how harmful chemicals impact children’s rights and advocating for policy makers to adopt rights compliant policies. We have been pushing for better protection and promotion of children’s rights at the international level, including by working closely with the UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights and by engaging in collective advocacy with partner organisations at the Human Rights Council towards the adoption of the resolution 45/30 on the rights of the child through a healthy environment.
We believe that using art is great at inspiring people to think critically about the world. That’s why we use artwork in our own campaigning to provoke critical conversations. We have hosted art exhibitions in London in 2018 and in Geneva in 2019. Using our artwork to deliver strong messages on children’s rights and harmful chemicals, we participate in conferences in the EU. We are also planning to organise in-person events combining advocacy and art in the EU sphere, including at the European Parliament.
What has the impact been so far?
Our impact varies and is always the result of the efforts of many, not just CRIN alone.
We created opportunities for EU decision makers to discuss what the EU can learn from the global human rights approach on protecting people from exposure to harmful chemicals. Together with other partner NGOs we organised a hearing at the EU Parliament in September 2022, inviting the Special Rapporteur on human rights and toxics, Marcos Orellana, to share his expertise at the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights. He drew attention to the 2022 UN resolution recognising the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and the impacts hazardous chemicals can have on human rights. His visit was a chance for the Subcommittee members to learn more about these developments and discuss how they apply to the EU.
Our joint advocacy, together with our allies and partners, resulted in a strong Human Rights Council resolution (45/30). This urges States to identify and eliminate sources of indoor and outdoor air pollution, as well as other dangerous substances which put children at risk. In September 2023, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child launched its General Comment 26 on children’s rights and the environment which provides guidance on how children’s rights are impacted by the environmental crisis and what governments must do to uphold these rights. CRIN was part of the expert advisory board for the development of this General Comment and submitted some inputs, which included the need for preventing children’s exposure to toxic chemicals, as well as prenatal exposure.
In the media
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