Best Interests of the Child: how to make real the basic principles of the Convention

ABSTRACT

The difference between rhetoric about the rights of the child and genuine change depends largely on how the concrete decisions affecting children are taken. There are two major stages in the implementation of the principle of "the best intersts of the child": to assess what is best for the child, and to balance her best interests against competing requests.

For the first stage it is essential that the child herself be heard and her opinions be taken seriously. Also, the various Aritcles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child give pointers to what is good for the child.

For the second stage it is important to remember the basic idea - that priority should be given to the child. However, others' interests should also be considered as relevant. In order to make the evaluation and balancing serious, it will be necessary to work with impact analyses.

When preparing decisions which appear to affect a child or children, there should always be a systematic attempt to analyse and evaluate the consequences of the proposed action. Also now - and before the decion is taken - children should be heard, whenever possible.

The purpose is to encourage the decision-makers to consider seriously the child dimension before they go ahead. They should not only do a child impact analysis, they should also be able to demonstrate that they have done so. This means that the burden of proof will be placed on those who move against child interests. One outcome might be that a search for alternatives to the original proposal will be encouraged when it is made clear that the impact on children was unfavourable.

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