Chilean children and youth meet the Committee on the Right of the Child in Geneva

Monday, April 27, 2015

Elizabeth, aged 16 and representing World Vision Chile joined the Chilean child delegation and travelled to Geneva to meet the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child for a pre-sessional briefing on Chile. This delegation presented the findings of a two year participatory research project. More than 2,000 children participated in the research through surveys, interviews and focus groups discussion.

The child led alternative research report on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was supported by a coalition of 21 NGOs, including World Vision Chile. The NGOs helped children to gather and analyse information about the situation of children’s rights in Chile.

Alternative reporting processes are opportunities for dialogue between Committee members, civil society organisations and children. The Committee actively encourages and supports the engagement of children and young people to report on the implementation of the CRC. This participation can vary from consultations to child-led reports, from videos to face-face meeting with the Committee in Geneva.

Elizabeth and her peers prepared this alternative report and five representatives were selected to travel to Geneva and present their findings to the Committee.  Elizabeth has already returned home from Geneva and she has had digested this lifetime experience. These are her thoughts.

Elizabeth, what was your role in the development of the alternative report to the Committee?

My role was mainly to be the voice of children of my country. I was primarily representing indigenous and rural children. I live myself in a rural community in the south of Chile.

I was chosen to represent indigenous children and present the third chapter of the alternative report. This chapter was drafted directly by indigenous children from a community in Alto Bío Bío. They used surveys to gather the information and discussed the issues that affect them, for example the violation of ecological and environmental rights. One of the major concerns is the big hydroelectric energy companies that come into the rural communities and cause harm, without asking people their opinions.

How did you prepare yourself to represent the Chilean children in the meeting with the Committee?

I read a lot and rehearsed my section many times. I was aware that I had only 10 minutes to present the important information from chapter three. The skills that I had learned in the leadership skills workshops run by World Vision were very helpful. I used everything that I learned, for example how to express myself, how to debate and how to defend an idea in an effective way.

I focused my presentation on a few topics, such as ecological rights, the situation of violence that indigenous children experience in their communities, and the right to education that is today being violated. I also talked about health because where I live, there is only one health-post. In the event of something more serious happening children are forced to go to the provincial capital hospital and this can take time and some people are already dead when they arrive at the hospital.

How was your experience of presenting the findings of the report to the Committee members?

At first, I was super nervous because I thought they were people who are travelling around the world defending our rights. However, after they introduced themselves I felt more confident as they were very approachable.  I met some of them a couple of days before the meeting and we talked in a relaxed manner. They asked us many things and told us that when they visited Chile they were taken to a luxury children's shelter and were told that education was free. We started telling them our experiences and how we see the implementation of children's rights in Chile.  We told them that not all children live well in the shelters, and that some families struggle to pay for their children’s education.

Children from Israel and Bangladesh also presented their findings. They told us the terrible things that happen in their countries, for instance children are kidnapped and killed. Luckily in Chile we do not experience these kind of situations. Our rights are respected, to small degree in our opinion, but we have rights. However, we argue that more laws are needed to ensure the implementation and enforcement of the rights.

What do you think that children and young people need in order to be prepared to engage in these types of initiatives?

I personally believe that leadership skills workshops are very important. I learned a lot. Previously, I had strong opinions on the things I wanted to say or to change, but I did not know how to say it or how to take action. The main reason was because I didn’t know anything about our rights.

I think the most important thing is to be well informed. If we are aware of the issues then we can understand what is happening and we can give our opinions and ideas for improvement.

I am convinced that children can and must participate and get involved. It is very important to be well trained in order to become better leaders. Information and training enable us to bring the voice of the voiceless to the public space.