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As an independent children’s rights institution (ICRI), the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland (CYPCS) has contributed to significant changes in children’s rights in Scotland (e.g., the implementation of the UN CRC in Scots national law). Since the establishment of CYPCS in 2004, children living in Scotland have come to be seen as holders of rights. Yet this change has been neither linear nor certain. Instead, the CYPCS has contended with pressures to demean children’s rights, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the CYPCS continues to advocate for children’s rights and interests, this ICRI looks forward to bolstering decision making of young people and ensuring security of their rights, which in turn will inform the efforts of the CYPCS.

The Child Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI) is a UNICEF-led collective impact intervention aimed at promoting children’s rights at the city and community levels. The CFCI operationalizes the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) for local governments through a framework for action aimed at realizing the rights of young people under 18 years of age: (1) to be valued, respected and treated fairly; (2) to be heard; (3) to access social services; (4) to be safe; and (5) to participate in family, life, play and leisure. This chapter provides an historical analysis of the CFCI globally and in the United States, and how this intervention draws upon and advances sociological research on young people’s meaningful participation. We present three case studies to analyze young people’s participation in CFCIs and the lessons learned from Houston, Texas, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and San Francisco, California.

Health is a human right and a fundamental building block of sustainable development, economic prosperity and poverty reduction. To realize people’s right to health, evaluating the situation of the right and its determinants is necessary. This paper aims to analyze Iran’s conduct in realizing its population’s right to health.

A qualitative case study design involving a structured review of relevant laws, policy documents, reports and academic literature was undertaken. The data were collected from electronic databases and the official Web pages of the United Nations (UN) and Iran’s Government and analyzed by a framework suggested by the UN.

Iran’s law and policies intend to combat health inequalities and to provide an adequate standard of living for everyone, particularly disadvantaged groups and individuals. However, not all laws and policies protecting disadvantaged groups are adequately implemented. There are disparities in health status and access to health care among different socio-economic groups. International economic sanctions and government policies decreased people’s ability to access the necessities of life including health care. Moreover, social determinants of health, such as cultural beliefs regarding women’s rights have not been addressed sufficiently in the country’s laws.

This study includes a broad range of subjects and provides an overview of the health-care system of Iran. However, more detail is needed to describe every aspect of the right to health. It was not feasible to address them all in this paper and needs more research. In addition, as with the majority of qualitative studies, the design of the current study is subject to limitations. Firstly, the research quality of narrative reviews is dependent on the researcher’ skills and more easily can be influenced by his/her personal biases. Second, the rigor is more difficult to maintain, assess and demonstrate. Nevertheless, narrative studies often complement quantitative studies and are informative.

To fulfill the right to health, Iran should improve affordability and quality of care and the situation of the determinants of health. The gaps in people’s access to health care need to be identified, and all necessary means and scarce resources be allocated to remove access barriers and to improve the situation of disadvantaged people. The adoption of relatively low-cost targeted programs, the proper management of resources and the prevention of unnecessary costs are suggested.

This chapter argues that sustainable development must be anchored on a human rights regime and that an integrated framing of human rights and sustainability in development policy and practice is crucial in the achievement of the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Using data gathered from the author's field research during her US Fulbright Fellowship in the Philippines in 2017, the chapter examines the impacts of corporate mining on the Philippine Indigenous people using the United Nations Declaration on the Human Rights of Indigenous People as a framework for analysis. The experience of the indigenous people shows that large scale corporate mining – largely dominated by transnational corporations – threatens their right to life, right to ancestral land, right to a healthy environment, right to education and cultural rights, right to self-determination, and the right to sustainable development. The violation of these rights threatens the Indigenous people's survival and makes their situation even more precarious during COVID-19 pandemic. State and corporate recognition of these rights is crucial to building resiliency to the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic and the survival of the indigenous people.

This article's overarching purpose is to serve as an initial theoretical and empirical step in applying rights consciousness inquiry to the criminal procedure context. First, building on previous work within the legal consciousness and rights consciousness traditions, I discuss the ways in which attention to criminal procedure can inform our understanding of rights consciousness and enumerate differences between the way rights consciousness approaches civil law and the ways it might approach criminal law. Additionally, I suggest that understanding the relationship between people's subjective impressions of procedures and procedures’ legal and moral validity offers a novel means of studying procedure that I term “procedural rights consciousness.” In the second part of the article, I report results of two studies designed as first empirical steps in applying rights consciousness as the first part suggests. My findings indicate that not only do people lack knowledge about their rights in criminal investigations but they also think about these rights in patterned ways that reflect a method of understanding law characterized by “lay jurisprudence” reasoning, in which culturally prevalent “tenets” are applied to specific situations. This mechanism often leads people to erroneous conclusions about the rights they possess. The final part of the article sets out an agenda for further rights consciousness research.

This chapter offers a critical examination of children and young people’s participation in Australia’s official celebrations of the International Year of the Child (IYC) in 1979. While the global objectives of IYC strongly reflected ‘protectionist’ or ‘welfarist’ approaches to children’s rights, the chapter shows that, at a local level, the year was also shaped by alternative notions of children’s liberation that had emerged in the preceding decade and a new emphasis on children’s voices by policymakers, advocates and researchers. The chapter explores how these ideas were incorporated at a national level before closely examining three initiatives in New South Wales (NSW), the Australian state where the emphasis on children’s voices was taken furthest. The initiatives examined are: (1) the establishment of a Kids Council to provide input into the state’s response to IYC; (2) the organisation of a Youth Forum for high school students; and (3) the provision of funding for the ‘Speakout’ camp for children in out-of-home ‘care’. None of these initiatives approached the radical forms of democratic participation envisioned by liberationists. Nonetheless, they attest to the wider credence given to ideas of children’s self-determination in this period, well before the formalisation of children’s ‘participation’ rights in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, 1989). The selected case studies also provide context to more recent debates over the inclusion of children and young people’s voices in decision-making processes, demonstrating how concerns around tokenism, exclusivity and adult-centricism manifested and were navigated at a time when the concepts of participation and voice remained relatively novel.

This opening chapter of the edited volume, Childhood, Youth and Activism: Demands for Rights and Justice from Young People and Their Advocates, explores activism and advocacy – by and for children and young people. It begins by considering how activism has been understood in the scholarly literature, before making a case for a broad and inclusive conceptualisation of what counts as this particular form of social action. Relatedly, it examines the contours of the relationship between activism and advocacy, drawing attention to the ways in which these concepts converge, an issue that is particularly salient when applied to the categories of child and youth. Themes that emerge in research on child and youth activism are then drawn out and we identify some of the key issues that animate this work across various disciplines. These include observations that young people have long been central to social movements, the role of social media in youth activism, the nature of child and adult relationships in social movement organisations, and some of the issues that arise for young activists in relation to intersectional identities. To this we add debates regarding the politics of recognition, questions of voice and agency, and responsibility and their temporal registers. This discussion also foreshadows themes that emerge in the chapters across this volume. Finally, we offer a reflection on some of the conceptual issues raised when considering the book in its entirety, including those of voice, responsibility for the future, the politics of possibility and hope, and the many different forms and practices that activism and advocacy for and by young people take.

This paper aims to demonstrate the specialty of the elderly issues and acknowledge the existence of their specific human rights that propose for a special treatment to be given or shown to them as priority as women or children, etc. Indubitably, the very issue is timely in all perspective. Because it is now axiomatic that the fastest growing elderly population becomes a challenge for the whole world for manifold reasons. They include, inter alia, the lack of a social security apparatus or if any, they are insufficient; the weakening of traditional family bonding; almost no explicit references to elderly people in existing international human right laws; and mere stand-by of soft law addressing the rights of the elderly over time. Consequently, these all have probably failed to meet the most urgent needs of this growing demographic.

This paper is an effort made to recognize the “particular vulnerability” of the older persons and with identification of “specific rights”, advocate for special treatment for them and, optimally, the realization of their rights with respect.

In addition, this treatise attempts to focus on the nature and constitutional importance of elderly rights with the aim of providing the elderly with social security and prioritization; and more particularly, scrutiny of the impending and timely imperative for formulation of new legal instrument so as to adequately address the issue globally.

Research within the fields of youth sexuality and safeguarding, and ethical governance more broadly, has traditionally prioritised risk aversion over the rights of young people to participate in and shape research. This excludes younger people from setting agendas and directly communicating their lived experience to those in power. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper describes and draws upon findings from an innovative two year participatory action research study exploring sexual consent with young people through embedded and participatory research across seven sites. The project was designed with young people and practised non-traditional approaches to research consent. As well as co-producing research data, the findings highlight how methods of co-enquiry and being explicit about the research consent process enabled young people to develop competence that can be applied in other contexts.

The paper addresses ethical tensions between young people’s rights to participation and protection. It argues that alongside robust safeguarding procedures, there is equal need to develop robust participation and engagement strategies with an explicit focus on young people’s competence, agency and rights to participate regardless of the perceived sensitivity of the topic.

The paper concludes with proposals for future youth-centred research practice. These relate to research design, ethical governance processes around risk and sensitive topics, emphasis on working collaboratively with young people and practitioners, a greater focus on children and young people’s rights – including Gillick competence and fluid models of consent. In doing so, it presents an essential point of reference for those seeking to co-produce research with young people in the UK and beyond.

The rule of law has been tried in many countries under the state of exception during COVID-19. This chapter focusses on the case of Finland, the only Nordic country to declare a state of exception during the pandemic. Drawing from theoretical accounts on the state of exception, it analyses to what extent the Finnish democratic Rechtsstaat has coped in the state of exception.

The authors propose the concepts of a radical and restrained state of exception and argue that while the Finnish states of exception were rather restrained than radical, there are risks involved in the fact that powers granted by the Emergency Powers Act to be used during a state of exception are moved to normal legislation. Indeed, as Giorgio Agamben, among others, has warned, the state of exception may become permanent and undermine democracy and the rule of law. The chapter provides a dialogue between theory and empirics related to a state of exception, applying theoretical insights on the case of Finland during COVID-19.