Letter to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on Consultation on General Comment No. 27:
30th June 2025
IPRT has submitted a letter to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, providing comments on the Committee’s draft General Comment No. 27 concerning children’s right to access justice and to an effective remedy. The IPRT previously provided substantive input on the draft General Comment in our submission to the Committee in August 2024, and the comments here should be read in conjunction with that submission.
In our submission, we emphasised the often-overlooked needs of children with a parent or caregiver in prison, whose best interests are rarely considered during sentencing. We urged the Committee to explicitly recognise this group in the draft General Comment and to include the judiciary among relevant public bodies. We recommended strengthening paragraph 48 of the draft General Comment to acknowledge the heightened risk and fear of reprisals faced by children deprived of their liberty, recognising this as a specific vulnerability and a serious obstacle to accessing remedial mechanisms.
