Children’s rights are based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and are about safeguarding the rights and interests of children and young people in society. This area covers all activities that affect children, such as education policy, migration policy, culture policy and social services policy.
Why does the Government want to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) into Swedish law?
The Government considers that despite strategic measures and the fact that the rights of the child are regularly transformed into applicable law and have been reflected in new legislation, these rights have not had a sufficient impact on decision-making processes concerning children. Nor has the fact that the CRC involves obligations for central and local government had a sufficient impact on activities.
The Government considers that it needs to be made clearer that Sweden's commitments under the CRC must be ensured at all levels in public sector activities and that a child rights-based approach should permeate all activities concerning children and young people.
Incorporation of the CRC gives it the status of Swedish law, entailing a clearer obligation on courts and legal practitioners to consider the rights that follow from the CRC in deliberations and assessments that are part of decision-making processes in cases and matters concerning children.
Giving the CRC the status of Swedish law, and with support and knowledge-enhancing measures, it is considered that a child rights-based approach will have an impact in practice.
In what way do the rights of the child have insufficient impact?
The Inquiry on the rights of the child found in its surveys that the impact of children's rights and of a child rights-based approach has been insufficient in many ways, including when it comes to the principle of the best interests of the child and the child's right to express their views.
The Government considers that despite strategic measures and the fact that the rights of the child are regularly transformed into applicable law and have been reflected in new legislation, these rights have not had a sufficient impact on decision-making processes concerning children. Nor has the fact that the CRC involves obligations for central and local government had a sufficient impact on activities.
How can the rights of the child be expected to have a greater impact on the application of the law in Sweden if the CRC is incorporated into Swedish law?
Incorporation of the CRC gives it the status of Swedish law, entailing a clearer obligation on courts and legal practitioners to consider the rights that follow from the CRC in deliberations and assessments that are part of decision-making processes in cases and matters concerning children.
Incorporation means that the child's role as a legal entity with specific rights of their own is made clearer and can therefore be expected to contribute to greater focus on the child in situations concerning the child.
In the Government's view, incorporation of the CRC will help give visibility to the rights of the child and is a way of creating a foundation for a more child rights-based approach in all public sector activities, in which these rights are seen from a holistic perspective.
All of the measures presented by the Government in the bill (prop. 2017/18:186) in the form of an act on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the guidance document, the knowledge boost and continued systematic transformation work should be seen as a single package to ensure that the Convention gains traction.
What will the difference be between the CRC as a legal act and as a ratified convention?
Incorporation will make the provisions of the CRC applicable as law and may – with the reservation that all the provisions are not directly applicable in each individual case – form the basis of decisions by public authorities in cases and matters in which the CRC's provisions are not explicitly stated in other legislation.
Incorporation of the CRC makes clear that other legislation concerning children, such as the provisions of the Children and Parents Code, the Aliens Act, the Education Act, the Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments and the Social Services Act, must be interpreted on the basis of the CRC in its entirety and not only on the basis of the provisions transformed into each act.
Incorporation will make the Convention as a whole more visible and it will be clear that the rights contained in the Convention are interlinked and should be interpreted in relation to each other, and that they are brought together in one and the same act. The Convention will be a cohesive regulatory framework to relate to.
The Government has appointed an Inquiry Chair who will propose a national strategy to prevent and combat violence against children, including honour-based violence and oppression. The strategy should take an integrated and coherent approach to preventing and combating violence against children over the next ten years. The decision is based on an agreement between the Government, the Centre Party and the Liberal Party.