The campaign Call for a Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty will hold an event in New York on October 13, during the United Nations General Assembly week on child rights. Italian human rights organization Antigone joined the campaign before the summer and supports its call for a new study on children deprived of liberty, which is still lacking despite the desperate need for it. The available quantitative and qualitative data are entirely insufficient. All around the world, children are too often deprived of their liberty. Detention is not used as a measure of last resort, as stated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Child detention harmful but increasing

A Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty is needed, the campaign maintains, as a growing number of children are deprived of their liberty each year, despite evidence that detention is costly, ineffective, and negatively impacts children’s health and development. The exact number of children deprived of their liberty worldwide is unknown. A global study would gather comprehensive data on all forms of child detention, assess how international standards are being implemented on the ground, and identify recommendations and best practices going forward, including alternatives to detention that may be more beneficial for both children and society.

Request for a UN study

The campaign asks member states to support a provision in the upcoming final draft of the 2014 United Nations General Assembly Resolution on the Rights of the Child that would request the UN Secretary-General to conduct the Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty and to appoint an independent expert to conduct the study on his behalf. The study would be conducted with voluntary contributions, without any impact on the regular budget of the UN.

Last June, an expert consultation was held in Geneva, the report of which is now available. Subsequent to the consultation, a mission to New York was carried out in order to lobby country representatives in light of the upcoming child rights resolution from the UN. Lobbying efforts have proven successful, as the first draft of the resolution contains the language requested in the study. Nevertheless, negotiations around the resolution will continue, as will the lobbying campaign.

Worldwide support

Many organizations from all over the world have signed the campaign, including Amnesty International, Save the Children, Human Rights Watch and Terres des Hommes. The supporting partners of the campaign are the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.