The UNICEF Human Rights Unit and the Universal Rights Group, are pleased to announce the digital launch of a new policy report:

'Realising Rights, Changing Lives' 
Tuesday 8 December, 15h00 - 16h30 (CET)
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The adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 marked a crucial moment for the protection and promotion of children’s rights. For the first time, children were recognised as individual rights-holders rather than dependents on the ‘good will’ of adults. Today, the Convention has received the highest number of ratifications of any of the core international human rights treaties. Yet the promulgation and ratification of treaties is only the first step in ensuring that all children, everywhere, can fully enjoy their rights. While the international community has, over recent years, placed increased emphasis on the on-the-ground implementation by States of their international human rights obligations and commitments, an important gap remains between the words in the Convention and the lived reality of millions of children around the world.

The report ‘Realising Rights, Changing Lives’ looks at how the human rights mechanisms — Treaty Bodies, the Special Procedures and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) – can be leveraged to support translating legal instruments into realities on the ground.

The report breaks new ground in two important ways. First, it represents a first comprehensive attempt to measure the on-the-ground delivery and impact of the international human rights system on the realisation of children’s rights. Second, it seeks to identify and share good practice on the part of United Nations entities for effective engagement with the reporting–implementation–reporting cycle of the United Nations human rights mechanisms, and to pinpoint the ‘success factors’ that appear to determine whether or not such engagement generates measurable improvements in the enjoyment of human rights and particularly child rights.

Draft programme

Facilitator

• H.E. Socorro FLORES LIERA, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the UN in Geneva

Opening remarks by

• H.E. Henrietta Fore, Executive Director UNICEF
• H.E. Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
• H.E. Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger, President of the UN Human Rights Council
• H.E. Walter Stevens, Head of the EU Delegation to the UN in Geneva
• Mr. Luis Pedernera Reyna, Chair of Committee on the Rights of the Child

Presentation of the main findings of the report 'Realising Rights, Changing Lives'

• Marc Limon, Executive Director, Universal Rights Gourp

Highlights from the case studies included in the report will be presented by a wide range of stakeholders working towards the full enjoyment of every right by every child.