Justice for Children in High-Level Agendas Reference Report: High-Level Political Forum 2024!
This document sets out the key findings from the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) Official Side Event, hosted on 10 July 2024 at Baker McKenzie Law Firm Offices in New York, on ‘SDG16: Accelerating Progress to Achieve Justice for Children - Leveraging Insights to Close the Justice Gap’.
Serving as a key preparatory milestone in anticipation of the 2025 World Congress on Justice with Children, and informing the Committee on the Rights of the Child’s development of the upcoming General Comment No. 27 on Children’s Rights to Access to Justice and Effective Remedies, this Official Side Event brought together governments, multilateral organisations, civil society organisations, and children and young people themselves to offer innovations which support the achievement of child-centred access to justice.
This Official Side Event was a multilateral call for strong partnerships and international, national and local action to achieve SDG 16 Justice for Children. This High-Level Session focused on the criticality of multilateral leadership and national action to achieve SDG16 for children. The event gave special attention to those children in vulnerable situations, facing the greatest adversity, and reflects our Agenda 2030 ambitions to not only ‘leave no one behind’, but also to ‘reach the furthest behind first’. Capturing the momentum from previous high-level sessions, this HLPF Side Event held particular relevance, as SDG 16 on Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions was a Voluntary National Review (VNR) reporting Goal for HLPF 2024. This session further actively contributes to the implementation of the 4 levers of action outlined in Pathfinders for Justice the "Justice for Children, Justice for All: Agenda for Action."
Key Findings:
What did we learn?
Speakers highlighted the gaps in children’s access to justice, in addition to the innovations of their ongoing work and future areas for improvement. All speakers renewed their commitments to the SDG 16 goal of Justice for Children as part of the wider Agenda 2030 and human rights framework.
Concerns were raised about the regression of children’s rights against a backdrop of multiple intersecting crises. Efforts to tackle these issues involved national, bilateral and multilateral interventions from grassroots to policymaking levels. Throughout, the need to listen to the voices of children and centre their experience of justice systems was considered paramount.
As a next step, the speakers highlighted the importance of self-reflection; building trust; transparency and multisectoral, international collaboration.
Overall, this event reinvigorated the call to actively address these challenges, and continue multilateral discussions, with anticipation of future learning at the upcoming World Congress on Justice with Children in Madrid, in June 2025.
