Strengthening Children’s Care Reforms through Access to Justice: Webinar
Join us for this webinar spotlighting the powerful intersection between two consequential global advocacy movements in human rights: the reform of alternative care systems for children, and the advancement of children’s access to justice.
Integrated approaches can strengthen the protection and promotion of the rights of children who are in, or at risk of entering, or transitioning out of, alternative care.
Access to justice and effective remedies can strengthen supports to families, prevent unnecessary separation, expand family-based alternatives, and progressively end the use of institutionalisation for all children.
Webinar Information
Date: Tuesday 16 December
Start time: 0800 New York / 1300 London / 1400 Geneva / 2100 Manila (90 mins)
About the Webinar
Grounded in a commitment to amplifying children’s views and lived experiences, and driven by the ambition to realize children’s human rights within alternative care, this session will:
Explore the role of child-centred justice and other mechanisms in enabling children and families to actively claim their rights. This includes securing access to essential services that prevent unnecessary family separation, and the ability to challenge inappropriate placement or gatekeeping decisions, for example.
Examine how justice and other mechanisms can provide effective remedies when children’s rights are violated in alternative care, and how accountability can be leveraged to drive systemic change across care and protection systems, ultimately safeguarding children’s rights to prevent harm.
This session aims to inspire collaborative strategies that accelerate the advancement of children's rights across care and justice sectors.
Join us as young people alongside government, CSO and international experts together will explore how these vital movements intersect and how collective action can build on these efforts to uphold children’s human rights in care reform efforts around the globe.
This webinar will also form the launch of the new UNICEF Reimagining Justice for Children Technical Brief: Children in Civil Proceedings.
Speakers
Sheema Sen Gupta, UNICEF
Benoit Van Keirsbilck, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
K.G. Nimali S. Kumari, Care experienced Advocate, Sri Lanka
Diahann Gordon Harrison, Children’s Advocate of Jamaica (TBC)
Karabo Ozah, Director of the Centre for Child Law, University of Pretoria
UK Government, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office representative
Moderated by:
Florence Martin, Executive Director, Better Care Network
Jennifer Davidson, Lead, Global Working Group on SDG 16+ Justice for Children and Professor, Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures at the University of Strathclyde
About the Speakers and Moderators
Sheema Sen Gupta, Director, Child Protection and Migration, UNICEF
Sheema’s UNICEF career, spans both development and complex humanitarian contexts. She has been in her current role as UNICEF Director of Child Protection and Migration for over two years. Prior to this, she has been UNICEF Representative in Iraq, Afghanistan and Deputy Representative in Afghanistan and Bangladesh.
In her various roles, she has led Programmes which focussed on making sustainable changes in systems, policy and service delivery for children and women. Sheema is well experienced in advocating for child rights in complex emergencies. Prior to these, Sheema was Chief of Child Protection Programme in Somalia and in Ghana. Sheema’s UNICEF career began in Child Protection, with a focus on developing Psychosocial Support Programmes for UNICEF’s emergency response. In the last two decades Sheema has worked in India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Ghana, Somalia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Iraq. A Malaysian national, she holds a Master’s in Clinical Psychology and practiced as a Psychologist and worked for The Calcutta Samaritans prior to joining UNICEF.
K.G. Nimali S. Kumari, Care experienced Advocate, Sri Lanka
Nimali S Kumari , affectionately known as Nimmu, is a care leaver from Sri Lanka who spent over a decade in institutional care. Nimmu holds a degree in Journalism, Advertising, and Mass Communication from NIILM University in India, along with additional qualifications in criminal investigation, criminal psychology and offender Counselling, Child Development and Child Protection and Social Sciences.
She has represented Sri Lanka as a speaker at numerous international conferences, has appeared on various TV programs discussing her life experiences, and has become a social media influencer. Drawing from her lived experiences, she is a passionate advocate for children's rights and alternative care. Her work focuses on reuniting orphaned children with their families and ensuring they have access to education and employment opportunities. She worked for one of the largest NGOs, Sarvodaya, for 10 years and later for the Egyptian Embassy. Currently, she is employed at Their Future Today in both the UK and Sri Lanka as Alternative Family and Foster Care Manager where she leads the foster care program, ensuring that children grow up in safe, loving families.
Inspired by her own 10 years in orphanages, Nimmu co-founded the Asian First Care Leavers Network Generation Never Give Up in 2017, the Rise Together Care Leavers Network in 2025, and is a Member of ARISE Center for Equality in Sri Lanka. Recently she has launched an autobiography “The Caged Girl: A Journey To justice" & "Dumburu Pathok" in Sinhala which received the Euro Knowledge Humanitarian Award in 2025 in the category of social justice.
Benoit Van Keirsbilck, Member, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
Benoit Van Keirsbilck is the Director of the Belgian section of Defence for Children – International. He is Chief Editor of the Journal of Children’s Law (Belgium) and member of the Advisory board of the UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty. He is a member of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Rights of the Child, which organises academic courses and develops research. He has been elected as a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2021-2024 and 2025-2029).
Benoit has dedicated his entire 35-year career to children's rights at national and international levels. He has a rich and broad experience: working in the field alongside children and families, legal expertise, evaluation of social and legal systems, training of professionals, writing articles and publishing books, monitoring legal proceedings at national and international levels, participation in expert committees, and teaching.
Karabo Ozah, Director, Centre for Child Law, University of Pretoria
Karabo Ozah is the Director of the Centre for Child Law. Karabo is also a lecturer in the Department of Private Law at the University of Pretoria. She lectures undergraduate and postgraduate courses in child law, social welfare law, education law, children’s rights in Africa as well as human rights.
Karabo has led and contributed to litigation successes in the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court of Appeal and High Courts in South Africa. Karabo is a member of the Advisory Committee of the South African Law Reform Commission’s Project 100D on care and contact with children. She is also a member of the Hague Expert Group on International Parentage and Surrogacy. Karabo also served as an independent board member and the National Chairperson of Childline South Africa from 2009 until September 2016. She was a member of the Rules Board‘s Children’s Court Task Team whose mandate was to draft court rules for the Children’s Courts in South Africa. Karabo has led and also been part of various research projects for the National Department of Social Development, Save the Children South Africa and Regional as well as the United Nations Populations Fund-East and Southern Africa.
Florence Martin, Executive Director, Better Care Network
Florence is a human rights lawyer and a clinical social worker with over 30 years of experience in human rights, child protection and children’s rights in both emergency and development contexts. Her work with children has focused on reforming and strengthening national child care and protection systems, including the framework for the delivery of social services and social work practice with children and their families. Prior to joining BCN, Florence worked as child protection adviser to the Ministry of Social Affairs in Indonesia where she supported major reforms of the child welfare and social work systems.
She also worked as global adviser on child protection for Save the Children UK, adviser in child protection to the East Timorese Ministry of Social Welfare, and legal adviser to the Human Rights Unit of the UN Transitional Administration for East Timor. Her human rights work included representing Amnesty International at the United Nations for five years. She holds a Master of Social Work from Columbia University and a Master of Public International Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Professor Jennifer Davidson, Lead, Global Working Group on SDG 16+ Justice for Children and Professor, Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures at the University of Strathclyde
Jennifer is the Executive Director of the award-winning Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, which works to reveal and help resolve the structural barriers to children in adversity reaching their potential. Jennifer seeks to drive meaningful and sustainable change with and for children, supporting the implementation of effective government policy to reach children’s day-to-day lives. Drawing on children’s human rights and the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, she works closely with governments and international agencies, most recently as lead of the Global Working Group on SDG 16 Justice for Children, and as a member of the high-ambition multi-sectoral Justice Action Coalition.
She co-founded the Observatory of Children’s Rights in Scotland, and previously led a series of international projects to support the delivery of the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children as founder and director of the Centre for Excellence on Children’s Care and Protection.