2021 Summer/Winter School: Children, human rights and the environment

Course Recording:

Course Description:

This class looks at the ways in which environmental degradation and climate change create new threats to the rights and interests of children. In recent years, children have been demanding that their rights are respected and prioritised through global children’s resistance movements and climate litigation instigated by child litigants. This class looks at the unique vulnerabilities of children in a time of environmental crisis but also at the ways in which children are political and social actors, influencing international and domestic policy. 

Recommended Readings:

Instructors:

Josefa Cariño Tauli (Sefa) is an Ibaloi-Kankanaey Igorot Indigenous youth from the Cordillera, Philippines. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN)–the official youth constituency to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Sefa is an active advocate for meaningful youth engagement and respect for Indigenous Peoples’ rights and knowledge. As part of GYBN, she contributes to the network’s participation and advocacy in CBD processes, as well as in its efforts in developing the capacities of youth biodiversity leaders around the world. She is currently a graduate student, focusing her research on biocultural diversity conservation in her home region. Through her research, she hopes to contribute to the body of knowledge we can use to tackle the inextricably interconnected threats to biological and cultural diversity. Sefa is a former Indigenous fellow under Conservation International’s Indigenous Leaders Conservation Fellowship, Co-chair of “Youth for Territories of Life” – the youth group of the global ICCA Consortium, and a National Geographic Young Explorer.

Zita M Nefale is the Senior Project Coordinator for the Centre for Child Law’s research, monitoring and evaluation unit. Zita obtained her LLB degree in 2011 and her Master’s degree in Child Law in 2016 and is currently an LLD Candidate in the are of Child Law. In 2016, she had the opportunity to be a researcher in the Constitutional Court under the mentorship of Justice Bess Nkabinde. Recently, Zita has been responsible for co-ordinating the children’s rights sector’s engagements with international and regional human rights treaty bodies. She was also involved in a global study on children deprived of liberty and a study on the impact of the Child Justice Act in South Africa and is currently involved in a project to assist the South African Human Rights Commission to develop an independent monitoring tool for Secure Care Centres.

Ms Ronaldah Lerato Karabo Ozah is the Director at the Centre for Child and a lecturer in the Department of Private Law of the University of Pretoria in South Africa. She obtained her LLB and LLM in Child Law (cum laude), as well as a Certificate in Advanced Labour Law from the University of Pretoria. Karabo joined  Centre for Child Law, which is a child rights organisation that protects and promotes children’s rights through strategic litigation, research and advocacy, in 2007. She also lectures undergraduate and postgraduate courses in child law, education law and human rights.

Karabo served as an independent board member and the National Chairperson of Childline South Africa from 2009 until September 2016. She was a member of the Rules Board‘s Children’s Court Task Team whose mandate was to draft court rules for the Children’s Courts in South Africa. Furthermore, Karabo is a member of the Hague Expert Group on International Parentage and Surrogacy which is tasked with researching the possibility of a Hague treaty to regulate international parentage and surrogacy.  Recently, she was appointed by the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services to serve on the Advisory Committee of the South African Law Reform Commission’s Project 100D on Care of and Contact with Children (incorporating Family Dispute Resolution).

Jonas Schubert is a Human Rights Officer at Terre des Hommes. He represents the Children’s Environmental Rights Initiative – a global coalition working to ensure children’s right to a healthy environment, conducted under the auspices of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment in collaboration with inter alia UNEP and Terre Des Hommes. Jonas is a Co-Convener of the Child Rights Connect working group on children’s rights and the environment. He is also a member of the board of the German association of human rights organizations (Forum Menschenrechte).