Child Rights during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Learning from Child Health-and-Rights Professionals across the World

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the importance of a child rights-based approach to policymaking and crisis management. Anchored in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the 3P framework—provision, protection, and participation—forms the foundation for health professionals advocating for children’s rights. Expanding it with two additional domains—preparation and power—into a 5P framework has the potential to enhance child rights-based policies in times of crisis and future pandemics. The study aimed to (1) gather perspectives from child health-and-rights specialists on how children’s rights were highlighted during the early phase of the pandemic in their respective settings; and (2) evaluate the usefulness of the 5P framework in assessing children’s visibility and rights. A qualitative survey was distributed among child health-and-rights professionals; a total of 68 responses were analysed in Atlas.ti 9 from a multi-disciplinary group of policymakers and front-line professionals in eight world regions. As framed by the 5Ps, children’s rights were generally not safeguarded in the initial pandemic response and negatively impacted children’s health and wellbeing. Further, children lacked meaningful opportunities to raise their concerns to policymakers. The 5P framework holds the potential to shape an ethical child rights-based decision-making framework for future crises, both nationally and globally.

Empowering the children's and women's forum as an effort to protect children and women from violence

“…In various cities and regencies in Indonesia already have children's forums as a place for children to participate and be listened to their opinions. Broadly speaking, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) groups children's rights into 4 (four) groups of basic rights, namely the right to survival, the right to grow and develop (development rights), the right to protection (protection rights), and the right to participate (participation rights) one of the principles is children's participation in environmental development which is also one of the rights of 31 children's rights (Jörgensen, Wood, Lynch, Spencer, & Gunnlaugsson, 2023). According to the Regulation of the Minister of Women's Empowerment and Child Protection of the Republic of Indonesia Number 3 of 2011 Article 1 Paragraph 2, "Child participation is the involvement of children in the decision-making process about everything related to themselves and is carried out on awareness, understanding and mutual will so that children can enjoy the results or benefit from the decision.…”