Children as the subject of substantive and procedural rights
The CBA’s Child and Youth Law Section has recommendations to improve access to justice.
In a nutshell
The Section has made recommendations to improve access to justice for children. These suggestions are part of a submission to the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child, which is reviewing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The CBA’s recommendations are in line with its previous representations to the Canadian government on the issue.
According to the Section, access to justice is “a fundamental right in itself, and an essential prerequisite for the protection and promotion of all other human rights.” For this fundamental right to apply to children, the Section emphasizes the importance of including the legal empowerment of children in the UN’s General Comment. This is “particularly important given the tendency to view the active participation of children in non-criminal proceedings as potentially harmful to them and to be avoided,” the CBA letter reads.
In practice, this means every intervention involving children must be grounded in the rule of law and recognize children as subjects with substantive and procedural rights.
“The General Comment should address the concepts of capacity and party status for children; the failure to recognize capacity and the absence of standing presents barriers to the recognition of the legal personality of children,” the CBA Section writes.
It then outlines specific examples where children’s due process rights should be strengthened in Canadian judicial proceedings.
Read the submission.
