Children's Access to Justice: a Critical Assessment

Children’s access to justice has emerged as an important topic in the children’s rights domain. While there has been increasing attention paid to child-friendly justice internationally, there has been relatively little research in this area. This book, with contributions from researchers and practitioners, explores the meaning, practice and challenges of children’s access to justice and contributes to a deeper understanding of what access to justice means to children, how they experience it and what it should look like in practice. It seeks to define access to justice in a global way, by addressing current challenges, asking new questions and providing answers to existing problems. One of the main areas of focus is children’s participation in legal proceedings, which critically explores how children are heard in family law, criminal law and child protection procedures. Special challenges faced by groups of children, such as indigenous children, are brought to light. The roles of different actors in justice, including judges and lawyers, but also institutions such as independent child commissioners and schools, and how they can improve children’s access to justice are explored. The book also highlights structural obstacles to children’s participation that can be explained by country-specific situations and the attitudes of adults towards children.

Many of the contributions are based on empirical research, bringing forth the voices of actors of justice and children themselves. While many of these contributions are county-specific, the book clearly demonstrates how challenges to children’s access to justice are universal in nature.