Human Rights in Alternative Care
Despite important work to help prevent children being placed in alternative care and the closure of residential institutions, we know that urgent actions are also needed to ensure those children living in family and community-based alternative care are not denied their human rights.
This project explores the dynamic intersection between two vital global movements: the reform of alternative care systems and the advancement of child-centred justice. By fostering deeper collaboration in these areas, we aim to strengthen the protection and promotion of the rights of children who are in, at risk of entering, or transitioning out of alternative care.
Grounded in a commitment to amplifying children’s voices and lived experiences, the initiative investigates how justice mechanisms can empower children and families to claim their rights - such as accessing essential services, challenging inappropriate gatekeeping decisions, and securing remedies when rights are violated.
Through this work, we seek to identify integrated, rights-based approaches that prevent unnecessary family separation, promote accountability, and drive systemic change across care and protection systems. Ultimately, the project aspires to inspire collaborative strategies that accelerate progress in safeguarding children’s rights across both care and justice sectors.
To support this drive, we’re working in partnership with UNICEF and Child Identity Protection in a Taskforce to help develop international innovative research, including the incorporation of a methodology to ensure the meaningful and creative participation of care experienced children and young people in its design and implementation.
Global Webinar: Strengthening Children’s Care Reforms through Access to Justice
In December 2025, Better Care Network, Child Identity Protection, the Institute for Inspiring Children's Futures, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, and UNICEF invited participants to join us for a powerful conversation at the intersection of two global advocacy movements:
Reforming alternative care systems for children, and
Advancing children’s access to justice and effective remedies.
This session explored how integrated approaches can protect and promote the rights of children who are in, at risk of entering, or transitioning out of alternative care, with a spotlight on child-centred justice mechanisms, securing access to essential services that prevent unnecessary family separation, and how accountability and remedies can strive systemic change.
Key Publications
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Children in alternative care score consistently lower on measures of well-being outcomes. However, research on children’s well-being outcomes and the fulfilment of their human rights have overlooked their experiences. Therefore, this scoping review aims to understand how children’s well-being outcomes are conceptualised, operationalised and measured – and compare these with consultations with care-experienced children from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child Day of General Discussion (DGD) 2021. We apply intersectionality to demonstrate that focusing on care-experienced children benefits children’s well-being outcomes more broadly.
Read here!
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Institutional care for children is harmful by definition and violates children’s human rights. Ending institutional care has been a key item on the international agenda for several decades, profiled in the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty and elsewhere. Much has become known about the lifelong harms of institutional care, more recently revealed through compelling testimonies of victims and survivors of institutional care which have been the driving force behind effective movements advocating for change, bravely holding governments and children’s service agencies to account. The possibilities and scale of the systems change efforts to reform children’s alternative care is increasingly better understood, through examples of positive reforms underway globally.
Read here! See page 34.
Background Resources
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The 2025–2030 Roadmap translates the findings of the 2019 UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty into concrete action. It builds on the momentum of the 2023–2024 plan and was developed through wide-ranging consultations during the Global Conference on Justice for Children Deprived of Liberty, co-organised by DCI and UNICEF in Geneva. The event convened over 150 participants, including children, from more than 50 countries to forge a collective vision rooted in rights, dignity, and justice. countries, including children, to forge a collective vision rooted in rights, dignity, and justice.
Read here!
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See panel concept note here!
Moderator: Prof. Jennifer Davidson, Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures, University of Strathclyde
Opening remarks: Dr. H.C. Guido Fluri, Guido Fluri Foundation
Child/youth representative
Dr Najat Maalla M’jid, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Violence against Children and chair of the United Nations Task Force on Children Deprived of Liberty
Nigel Cantwell, DCI Founder and prime actor, UN Guidelines for Alternative Care of Children
Karabo Ozah, Centre for Child Law, University of Pretoria
Watch the full event here!
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The Global Charter sets out a global commitment to ensure that every child grows up in a safe, nurturing family environment rather than in harmful institutional care. Grounded in the UNCRC, it urges governments, civil society, and partners to strengthen families, prevent unnecessary separation, expand family-based alternatives, and reduce institutionalisation. The Charter calls for ending exploitative practices such as orphanage tourism, investing in services that support children - including those with disabilities and care leavers - and involving children and those with lived experience in reforms. Overall, it provides a global framework to build robust social service systems, to collect and share data to track progress by 2030 and uphold children’s rights, dignity, and well-being.
Read here!
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The Global Declaration places children’s rights and well-being at the heart of justice systems, ensuring age-appropriate, inclusive, and accessible processes and forms the basis of the Global Working Group on SDG 16+ Justice for Children 2026-2030 Strategy. The Declaration calls for justice systems to recognise children as rights-holders and empower them to participate meaningfully to claim rights, report violations, and seek remedies through judicial and non-judicial avenues. To prevent harm and achieve equal access to justice - essential in the delivery of SDG 16 - systems must move beyond simply accommodating children to being designed with them and for them. It calls for a broad approach to justice to overcome the barriers to justice children experience, such as violence, conflict, discrimination, lack of identity, and deprivation of liberty.
Read here!
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the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is developing General Comment 27 on Access to Justice and Effective Remedies (due 2026), which will provide authoritative guidance to States on implementing children’s rights in legal and judicial processes. It is likely to address how national laws and policies facilitate or hinder children’s access to justice, the effectiveness of judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, and the barriers children face in obtaining appropriate remedies. This is to ensure that children are recognized as rights-holders entitled to protection, participation, and redress in all aspects of justice.
Read the Draft here!