Amanda Third to present to UN Committee on the Rights of the Child
Associate Professor Amanda Third has been invited to present to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child at their Day of General Discussion in Geneva on 12 September. The Committee is meeting to consider how to update the Convention on the Rights of the Child for the digital age.
In her presentation, Associate Professor Third will discuss the findings of the project she has been leading: 'Children's Rights in the Digital Age: A Download from Children Around the World'.
This project was undertaken with the explicit aim of providing a way for children’s views to inform the Committee’s deliberations when they meet to update the Convention and has included crowd sourced content from young people in 16 countries. A short film documenting the children's insights and experiences will also be screened at a lunchtime event of the Geneva meeting.
The project documented and analysed the ways that children themselves, in different locations around the world, conceptualise and enact their rights in relation to their digital media practices. In particular, it asked children to reflect upon the extent to which they use digital media in their everyday lives and the motivations for their use; what their rights are in a digital age; how their rights might be enhanced by their engagements with digital media; and what kinds of challenges digital media pose to their capacity to claim their rights.
In July and August, with the support of organisations affiliated with the Digitally Connected Network (opens in a new window), 148 children aged 7-18 participated in workshops in which they reflected on their rights.
The work has resulted in three project outputs: the short film documenting the children's insights and experiences; a report analysing the content generated by the children in relation to the existing scholarship on children’s rights in the digital age; and a set of ‘digital champion’ stories showcasing how children, or organisations working with children, are using technology to enhance the rights of children in different locations around the world.
The project was undertaken by a team of Young and Well CRC researchers based at ICS, on behalf of the Digitally Connected Network, and in partnership with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University (opens in a new window)and Voices of Youth (opens in a new window), UNICEF's global digital engagement portal. Working on the project with Associate Professor Third were Research Assistants Emma Keltie, Kari Pihl, Delphine Bellerose and Professional Writer Urszula Dawkins.
The report from this project will be publicly available shortly.
11 September 2014
