Carleton’s Landon Pearson Resource Centre (LPC) celebrated the 30th anniversary of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child with a celebration event and youth panel.
The Nov. 21 event also served as a launch of the newest issue of the Canadian Journal of Children’s Rights, which focused on children’s rights and disabilities.
Claudia Mitchell, a professor at McGill University and guest editor of the journal said she hopes the journal will change the way people look at children’s rights.
“We’re really hoping that people will be inspired, and also recognize how important the scholarship in the area is. We have people writing about this work and putting it out there to other academics and kind of creating a whole community around… the world about these topics,” she said.
“I’m particularly interested and proud of the fact that we have several articles in the journal that actually really highlight the specific issues around girls and young women because they are even more marginalized, so I think honouring their rights is as important.”
Having youth with disabilities speak about their own experiences is “absolutely imperative,” said Danielle Bendo, national coordinator of the Child Rights Academic Network.
“A lot of the times we see initiatives where young people might not have an opportunity to speak and to give their insight and perspectives,” she said. “I think that young people are experts in their own lives, so it’s somewhat problematic to speak on behalf of young people when they want to speak on behalf of themselves.”
Celine Kavanaugh, a first-year mechanical engineering student and one of the student panellists, said speaking on the panel gave her a chance to show other youth how “disability can be positive.”
“It’s really important for youth to see people that have lived through the same thing as them or something similar just to see that they’re not the only ones and they’re not alone,” she said.
“This is a great opportunity to have people’s own voices heard, especially the voices of autistic young people like myself because that’s one section of children’s rights that is often overlooked,” said Falean Quinn, a fourth-year anthropology student at Carleton who also spoke on the panel.
“This is a chance to talk about some of the issues that actually impact autistic young people from our own perspectives, rather than the perspectives of our parents, which is often the case in the mainstream,” they added.
Bendo said the event was a chance to not only celebrate the work that’s been done but also focus on the future of children’s rights.
“While it’s nice to look back and see a lot of the successes and advances that we’ve achieved over the past 30 years, it’s also important to reflect to see what else needs to be done in Canada and internationally, and there’s quite a bit of work that still needs to be done.”
It’s also important to remember children’s rights are for all children, said Landon Pearson, Chair of the LPC.
“Whether you have a disability or not, you have the same rights as everyone else. For some, having a disability has been enabling, and has helped them do things that they might not have done,” she said.
“We try to give a positive story of what happens when you actually respect children’s rights.”
Featured image by Pascale Malenfant. With files from Pascale Malenfant.
