When children participate meaningfully, everyone benefits. Involving children in decision-making leads to better solutions and outcomes, both for children and for society.
There are three reasons why children should be part of decisions that affect their lives: It leads to better solutions, children want to express their views and the UNCRC requires it.
It leads to better solutions
Using children’s perspectives as a foundation for decision-making leads to more relevant, safer and more sustainable solutions. It strengthens services, improves policies and helps prevent unintended harm. Systematic involvement of children is therefore not only a rights obligation, but a necessary approach to improving systems that affect children and young people.
Children’s collective viewpoints are the most direct path to better solutions, both for children and for society. Children live with the consequences of decisions made about them. When their collective viewpoints are excluded, decisions risk missing what actually matters in children’s lives.
Children want to express their views
Across contexts, children report that they are rarely invited to share their experiences or propose solutions to issues that affect them. Many are unfamiliar with their rights to information, to express their views safely, and to have those views taken seriously in decision-making.
Children often want to contribute, but do not know how or where to share their views. When they are invited, many describe feeling that decisions have already been made, or that their input does not lead to change. This gap between children’s willingness to participate and the opportunities available to them remains significant in schools, services and other settings.
UNCRC requires it
General Comment No. 14 from the Committee on the Rights of the Child clearly states that groups of children under the age of 18 who are affected by a decision must be heard before the obligations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) can be fulfilled. Their views must be clearly expressed, considered and given due weight.
Authorities and service providers are obliged to have systems in place that actively seek children’s knowledge. This requires the use of safe and effective methods to ensure that children’s perspectives form the very foundation of decisions. It means moving beyond merely listening, towards offering every child what they are entitled to: a voice, a space, an audience, and real, decisive influence.
We welcome contributions that can strengthen how children are involved in decision-making.
This can include frameworks, guidance, tools, research, reports, or examples of practice.
If you are working on something relevant – or know of something that should be included – we would like to hear from you.
All submissions are reviewed before being published.
Please ensure that what you share is respectful and that you have permission to share any content, especially when it involves children.
