Guidance Note of the Secretary General: Child Rights Mainstreaming

This Guidance Note is a very significant first step in addressing the need for a systematic application of a child rights approach across the UN System. The Guidance Note includes new progressive language on child rights and stresses the need for a more holistic implementation of the UN Convention on the Right of the Child.
The Guidance Note includes a strong element on child participation, which we can use to push for the UN to be more inclusive and equipped to interact with children in a safe, empowering and sustained way, and for meaningful child participation to make children’s voices heard at the UN level.

In 2021, Child Rights Connect, together with 100 civil society organisations, publicly called on the SG to ensure the systematic application of a child rights approach by all UN bodies and agencies. In response to Child Rights Connect’s position paper commenting on the SG’s report “Our Common Agenda”, the SG decided to develop a Guidance Note on Child Rights Mainstreaming. This provides practical guidance to all levels of the United Nations, across all three pillars (development, human rights and peace and security), to Headquarters, regional and field contexts, on how to integrate children’s rights within management, programmes and operations.
Save the Children worked closely with Child Rights Connect and other child rights agencies to support this call.

The document was drafted by an inter-agency group composed of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), UNICEF, the Special Representative of the SG on Violence Against Children (SRSG VAC) and the Special Representative of the SG on Children in Armed Conflict (SRSG CAAC). Save the Children was involved in consultations around the guidance note and contributed to its development through written submissions, comments and interactions with the inter-agency group.