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The implementation of children's rights is regarded as especially important in times of emergency. In responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, few governments around the world chose to pay explicit attention to children and their human rights. The adverse consequences of lockdowns for children's education, health, and development have been profound. Had governments engaged with children and young people, as they have promised to do, some of these harms might have been reduced or avoided. In future emergencies, governments should ensure that children's best interests are a primary consideration. Children and young people should also be involved in policymaking processes so that the impacts on them from public policies in any emergency are understood fully and addressed explicitly.

Countries which have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have committed to implementing its principles in law and policy. This article explores the challenges for securing children's rights through policy, drawing on a research project conducted for the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People, which sought to identify barriers to effective government delivery for children and young people from the perspective of key stakeholders. The research concluded that, while some barriers (such as delay and availability of data) are not child‐specific, they can be accentuated when children and young people are the main focus of policy development and more so when seeking to adopt a child rights‐compliant approach to policy development and implementation.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) requires States Parties to take all appropriate measures to implement the rights in the Convention. As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Convention's adoption, focus has shifted onto the measures being taken at national level to give effect to children's rights with specific reference to legal incorporation both direct and indirect. The way in which the CRC is given legal effect is highly contingent upon the constitutional and legal systems of individual countries and can best be understood by those writing from the specific national context. So this book combines individual contributions that address the experience of legal incorporation in selected countries by their national experts, with comparative analysis of the international landscape from the world's leading authorities on legal implementation of the CRC. The result is an up-to-date, comparative and international analysis of the progress made around the world to incorporate the CRC, in the first comprehensive and analytical presentation of these issues. Incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into National Law is a rich resource central to the work of every lawyer with an interest in the CRC or the incorporation of international legal instruments.

International human rights instruments provide a legal basis for an agreed set of human values globally. These 'values' are expected to underpin the purposes and content of education. This paper aims to explore how compliance with human rights instruments and values is balanced by educational leaders in Northern Ireland where diverse interpretations of human rights are held by the main communities and managerialist principles guide education policy making. The paper argues that whilst there is a political and policy commitment to protecting human rights in education as a means of addressing the causes of conflict, this commitment is constantly threatened by interpretations of rights in the local context and a polity underpinned by managerialist principles. It is argued that managerialist concerns around budgetary constraint and academic performance frame the work of educational leaders, yet it is in retrieving the human values which underpin rights, that the potential for educational leaders to transform society through education might be best realised.

Incorporation in law is recognised as key to the implementation of the UNCRC. This article considers the ways in which a variety of countries have chosen to incorporate the CRC, drawing on a study conducted by the authors for UNICEF-UK. It categorises the different approaches adopted into examples of direct incorporation (where the CRC forms part of domestic law) and indirect incorporation (where there are legal obligations which encourage its incorporation); and full incorporation (where the CRC has been wholly incorporated in law) and partial incorporation (where elements of the CRC have been incorporated). Drawing on evidence and interviews conducted during field visits in six of the countries studied, it concludes that children's rights are better protected – at least in law if not also in practice – in countries that have given legal status to the CRC in a systematic way and have followed this up by establishing the necessary systems to support, monitor and enforce the implementation of CRC rights.

AbstractChildren and young people are increasingly participating in events organised by international organisations. In spite of a growing body of research on children's participation in decision‐making, little is known about their experiences and the perceptions of adults who attend. This article compares the experiences of 16 children and 12 adults who participated in high‐level global events. Three themes were identified, Representation, Capacity and Impact. Findings suggest that while children and adults identified similar opportunities and challenges for meaningful participation, children's perceptions of their engagement differed from adults' in that they were more likely to be positive about the value of their contribution.

Contents: Lesley Emerson/Laura Lundy: Education Rights in a Society Emerging from Conflict: Curriculum and Student Participation as a Pathway to the Realization of Rights – Martha Baiyee/Celeste Hawkins/Valerie Polakow: Children's Rights and Educational Exclusion: The Impact of Zero-Tolerance in Schools – Natasha Blanchet-Cohen: The Protagonism of Under-18 Youth in the Québec Student Movement: The Right to Political Participation and Education – Panagiota Karagianni/Soula Mitakidou/Evangelia Tressou: What's Right in Children's Rights? The Subtext of Dependency – Kylie Smith: A Rights-Based Approach to Observing and Assessing Children in the Early Childhood Classroom – Lacey Peters/Lisa Lacy: «You're Not Listening to Us»: Explicating Children's School Experiences to Build Opportunity for Increased Participation Within School Communities in the United States – Jenny Ritchie/Cheryl Rau: Renarrativizing Indigenous Rights-Based Provision Within «Mainstream» Early Childhood Services – Nkidi Phatudi/Mokgadi Moletsane: Restoring Indigenous Languages and the Right to Learn in a Familiar Language: A Case of Black South African Children – Bekisizwe Ndimande/Beth Blue Swadener: Pursuing Democracy Through Education Rights: Perspectives from South Africa – Harry Shier/Martha Lidia Padilla/Nohemí Molina Torres/Leonilda Barrera López/Moisés Molina Torres/Zorayda Castillo/Karen Alicia Ortiz Alvarado: Claiming the Right to Quality Education in Nicaragua – Colette Murray: Getting an Education: How Travellers' Knowledge and Experience Shape Their Engagement with the System – Leodinito Y. Cañete: When Boys Are Pushed-Pulled out of School: Rights to Education in the Philippines – Janette Habashi: Intersections of Education and Freedom of Religion Rights in the UNCRC and in Practice.

The Legal Rights of Students with Disabilities: International Perspectives examines the rights of disabled students in ten diverse countries on six continents. Written by leading experts in education law, this volume provides comparative insights to help meet the educational needs of disabled students. The book also offers strategies to manage the legal and educational complexities associated with special education.

Children have a right to have their views sought and given due weight on all matters affecting them, including at times of emergency and crisis. This article describes the process and findings of the ground-breaking CovidUnder19 survey ("Life Under Coronavirus") which was co-designed with children for children, capturing the experiences of over 26,000 children in 137 countries as to the realisation of their human rights during the first six months of the covid-19 pandemic. Key findings are discussed through the lens of the crc' s four general principles, read alongside children's rights, inter alia, to education, play and to be protected from harm. It argues that governments and public bodies should have sought children's views – not just because they were under an obligation to do so – but because such engagement, now and in crises to come, provides an early warning system that enables decision-makers to mitigate some of the adverse consequences of their responses for children and their rights.