Rights of the Child Realizing the Rights of the Child and Inclusive Social Protection

A/HRC/RES/55/29View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the Human Rights Council, under agenda item 3Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2024.

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

1 entity

Extracted automatically from each entity’s budget submission.

What subjects does this mandate have?

6 topics

Anti-Discrimination Measures Children in Armed Conflicts Popular Participation Rights of the Child Social Policy Social Security

What does this mandate say?

35 operative paragraphs

Welcomes the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the rights of the child, and takes note with appreciation of his report on the rights of the child and inclusive social protection;

Calls upon States to consider ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the optional protocols thereto, and calls for renewed efforts towards their full implementation by all parties;

Inclusive social protection

Urges States to ensure that all children, in line with international human rights law, have access to inclusive social protection;

Also urges States to put in place, if they have not yet done so, appropriate legislation, policies, systems and procedures to ensure that the best interests of the child are a primary consideration in all actions affecting children and in all decisions taken relating to their inclusive social protection;

Calls upon States parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to take the measures necessary to achieve the full realization of the rights of the child to social security, including social insurance, in accordance with the Convention;

Urges States to ensure the widest possible inclusive social protection and assistance for families, taking, where necessary, relevant special measures of protection and assistance on behalf of all children and ensuring that inclusive social protection measures are available, adequate and accessible;

Also urges States to invest in child rights-compliant inclusive social protection, including with a view to fulfilling the needs and human rights of all family members, which may have high economic and social returns and is a strategic choice that benefits all children, enabling them to realize their human rights and potential and to live in dignity, and a key component of strong economies and healthy societies;

Further urges States to build and adapt inclusive social protection systems to meet the specific needs and capacities of children in forced displacement and migrant and refugee children, including by providing safety nets and child-friendly, accessible spaces that recognize the importance of play and recreational facilities, which can help to protect children and provide physical and psychological support for children affected by crises;

Calls upon States to allocate sufficient resources to ensure effective inclusive social protection for children and the realization of their rights, including to social security;

Encourages States to progressively move towards universal inclusive social protection coverage, including by implementing universal child benefits without discrimination of any kind and integrating them with complementary services;

Urges States to ensure that inclusive social protection schemes offer adequate, adapted support for children with disabilities, including remuneration for individuals who provide their care, in a dignified manner reflecting special needs for assistance and support in order to promote the full and effective participation of children with disabilities in society on an equal basis with other children and to ensure the enjoyment of their rights in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities;

Also urges States to take the measures necessary to ensure the full enjoyment by all children of all their human rights and ensure access to inclusive social protection services through effective regulation and enforcement mechanisms, including by:

Enacting and implementing the necessary legal and policy frameworks anchored in human rights, particularly child rights obligations, to establish a comprehensive child rights-based approach to inclusive social protection as part of a life cycle and integrated systems approach, ensuring that no child is left behind, that inclusive social protection services include universal and comprehensive child and family benefits and financial and material support for parents or caregivers, such as parental leave and affordable, quality childcare, and that inclusive social protection services are accompanied by human rights-based care and support, as well as universal access to basic services, including health services, equal access to free, quality inclusive education, a safe digital environment, water and sanitation, affordable nutritious food and adequate housing;

Paying particular attention to mitigating the disproportionate impact on children in marginalized and vulnerable situations and facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination by developing a risk-informed approach addressing the root causes and risk factors of gender inequality to ensure that all children have access to age-, disability- and gender-responsive and inclusive social protection;

Ensuring meaningful consultation with children in inclusive social protection decisions concerning them and that information on social protection is child-friendly and accessible to all children in marginalized and vulnerable situations;

Conducting budget analyses to align budgets with children’s rights obligations and introducing the revenue streams necessary to ensure child rights-compliant financing of integrated, multi-stakeholder-inclusive social protection systems, and allocating sufficient and adequate human and financial resources to effectively implement them;

Collecting timely, quality, transparent and disaggregated data on children, covering all grounds of discrimination prohibited under international human rights law and establishing comprehensive and transparent monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to analyse inclusive social protection systems, identify gaps and inform evidence-based legislative processes and policymaking to ensure that social protection systems are truly inclusive, including through child rights impact assessments and evaluations in legislative, policy and programme design;

Considering inclusive social protection an integral part of the elimination of child labour;

Raising awareness and distributing clear, accessible and targeted information on available inclusive social protection support, eligibility criteria and how to apply;

Further urges States to ensure that all children have access to justice and timely, effective, inclusive, gender-, disability- and age-responsive and trauma-informed remedial victim support and reparation and guarantees of non-repetition when their rights are violated in the context of inclusive social protection, ensuring the availability and accessibility of free-of-charge, safe, confidential, responsive and child-friendly reporting mechanisms, to uphold child-responsive due process guarantees in administrative and judicial proceedings, taking into account the best interests of the child as a primary consideration and that the child has the right to be provided the opportunity to be heard in such proceedings, either directly or through a representative or an appropriate body, and to provide the child with relevant information concerning violations and reparation mechanisms, access to effective legal representation and assistance adapted for children and, where relevant, for and through their parents, caregivers and legal guardians;

Calls upon States to adopt measures, with an intersectional approach, to recognize, value and redistribute on an equal and fair basis paid and unpaid care work and to reduce unpaid care work, which is currently still disproportionately performed by women and girls, hampers their access to formal employment and jeopardizes their right to contributory social security, by promoting the equal sharing of responsibilities among family members and among families, communities, the private sector and States and by prioritizing, inter alia, sustainable and accessible infrastructure and transport, affordable and quality social services, including care and support services and products, childcare and labour standards that provide for decent work and gender equality for all workers, including maternity, paternity or parental leave, equal pay for work of equal value, safe and healthy working conditions and freedom from violence and harassment in the world of work, including sexual and gender-based violence and harassment, freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively;

Urges States to ensure that social protection coverage is gender-responsive and tailored to the needs of women and girls, including with regard to their right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health information, education and care services, and menstrual health and hygiene, as well as maternal health, services, such as prenatal and postnatal care and breastfeeding and nutrition services;

Also urges States to comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law and international human rights law, particularly the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the optional protocols thereto, emphasizing the importance of accountability for all violations and abuses of the rights of the child;

Child rights mainstreaming

Notes with appreciation the Guidance Note of the Secretary-General on Child Rights Mainstreaming, which emphasizes the need to integrate a child rights perspective, including through the active and meaningful engagement of children, necessarily engaging those most at risk of being left behind, in all decision-making processes affecting the enjoyment of their human rights and sets out clear expectations for the entire United Nations system and United Nations entities, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and human rights investigative and accountability mechanisms, to ensure the ethical, meaningful and safe participation of children in all relevant United Nations action and United Nations forums, as necessary to achieving the mainstreaming of child rights;

Encourages States to take steps to establish structured and child-friendly modalities to promote the right of children to be heard in local, national, regional and international forums;

Urges States to support the role of the Office of the High Commissioner in mainstreaming child rights across the United Nations system in line with its mandate, and encourages them to affirm their commitment to increasing financial support for the Office’s thematic capacity, including its capacity:

To deliver, upon request, advisory and capacity-building activities to States and other relevant stakeholders on the full spectrum of child rights in line with international human rights law;

To coordinate the implementation of and regularly monitor the progress made in mainstreaming the rights of the child across the United Nations system, in cooperation with the United Nations Children’s Fund;

Follow-up

Requests the Secretary-General to expand the capacities of the Office of the High Commissioner, to advance child rights mainstreaming, in particular child participation and child safeguarding, in the work of the Office and the human rights accountability and investigative mechanisms that it supports, and to provide advice and technical assistance on issues concerning the implementation of the human rights of children to States, upon request, and to all relevant United Nations organizations and bodies, as appropriate;

Requests the High Commissioner to prepare a report on child rights mainstreaming across the United Nations, including on the implementation of the Guidance Note of the Secretary-General on Child Rights Mainstreaming, in consultation with all relevant stakeholders, including States, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, relevant special procedure mandate holders, other relevant United Nations bodies and agencies, regional organizations and human rights bodies and civil society, including through consultations with children themselves, and to present the report to the Human Rights Council at its fifty-ninth session;

Encourages the special procedures and other human rights mechanisms of the Human Rights Council to continue to integrate a child rights perspective into the implementation of their mandates and to include in their reports information, qualitative analysis and recommendations on the rights of the child, paying attention to the adverse impact of the lack of inclusive social protection on the full enjoyment of the rights of the child;

Invites all human rights treaty bodies to continue to integrate the rights of the child into their work, in particular their concluding observations and general comments and recommendations, paying attention to the adverse impact of the lack of social protection on the full enjoyment of the rights of the child, and encourages them to consult children in an ethical, meaningful and safe manner;

Calls upon all human rights mechanisms of the Human Rights Council, including subsidiary and advisory bodies, as relevant, to monitor and analyse more consistently the root causes of child rights violations and abuses, through disaggregated data, considering all children in marginalized and vulnerable situations, and to translate that analysis into specific and action-oriented recommendations for all relevant stakeholders to promote accountability for children’s rights;

Decides to continue its consideration of the question of the rights of the child in accordance with its programme of work and its resolutions 7/29 of 28 March 2008 and 19/37 of 23 March 2012, and requests the Office of the High Commissioner to organize its annual full-day meeting on the rights of the child in 2025 on the theme of early childhood development, to ensure appropriate resources to support and facilitate the participation of children, ensuring that they have easy access to relevant premises, and to make the discussion fully accessible to children and to persons with disabilities;

Requests the High Commissioner to prepare a report on the rights of the child and violations of the human rights of children in armed conflicts, in close cooperation with all relevant stakeholders, including States, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, relevant special procedure mandate holders, other relevant United Nations bodies and agencies, regional organizations and human rights bodies, national human rights institutions and civil society, including through consultations with children themselves, to make the report available in an accessible and child-friendly format and to present the report to the Human Rights Council at its sixtieth session, and requests the Office of the High Commissioner to organize the annual full-day meeting on the rights of the child in 2026 on the theme of the rights of the child and violations of the human rights of children in armed conflicts, to ensure appropriate resources to support the participation of children, ensuring that they have easy access to relevant premises, and to make the discussion fully accessible to children and to persons with disabilities.

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