The Convention on the Rights of the Child: Repertoires of NGO Participation

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is often presented as the treaty that allows most strongly for non-governmental organisation (NGO) participation. Moreover, NGOs were actively involved in the drafting of the CRC itself, as well as of its three Optional Protocols (OPs). The CRC therefo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human rights law review 2012-03, Vol.12 (1), p.33-64, Article 33
Main Authors: Erdem Türkelli, Gamze, Vandenhole, Wouter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Children & youth
Children's rights
Committees
Congresses and Conventions
Conventions
Human Rights
NGOs
Nongovernmental Organizations
Participation
Reform
Roles
Treaties
United Nations
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is often presented as the treaty that allows most strongly for non-governmental organisation (NGO) participation. Moreover, NGOs were actively involved in the drafting of the CRC itself, as well as of its three Optional Protocols (OPs). The CRC therefore makes a good case study of the role NGOs can play in the drafting and monitoring of human rights treaties, and may prove useful in current debates on United Nations treaty body reform more generally. In order to assess NGO participation and impact, the concepts of repertoires of NGO participation and frame alignment are used. It is tentatively concluded that 60-70% of NGO concerns tend to be taken up in the CRC Committee's Concluding Observations. While these findings may seem to confirm that NGOs do have substantial impact on the reporting process, they need to be interpreted with utmost caution especially because we do not possess insight into whether and to what extent the Committee would have taken up these issues at any rate.
ISSN:1461-7781
1744-1021
DOI:10.1093/hrlr/ngr045