Claire Fenton-Glynn and Brian Sloan recently hosted a colloquium as part of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child Implementation Project. Like its predecessors (held elsewhere), the colloquium was an invitation-only event bringing together international experts to analyse the implementation of a specific article of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The goal was to explore the challenges faced by legal systems in giving effect to an internationally-agreed standard.
This colloquium addressed Article 5, which protects the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or others to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of his/her rights.
The two-day event interdisciplinary event at Robinson College brought together international experts from law, sociology, and neuroscience, as well as representatives from civil society and international organisations. The topics covered included residence disputes, gender identity and bodily integrity in the context of religious and cultural practices, the significance of environment and play on the evolution of children’s capacity, and parental control of access to knowledge of origins. The discussions proved very fruitful.
Selected papers from the colloquium will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Children’s Rights, to be edited by Drs Fenton-Glynn and Sloan. The programme for the event is available, and tweets from it can be viewed via the hashtag #CRCArt5.
In addition to that from the Centre, financial support for the event was gratefully received from the Cambridge Socio-Legal Group, Robinson College and the University of Cambridge’s Strategic Research Initiative on Public Policy.
