Child-Friendly Justice and Children’s Rights

Whether children come into contact with the law as victims, witnesses, offenders or complainants, it is
equally important that they are met with a system that understands and respects both their rights and
their unique vulnerability.
This idea – that we must take special care with children whose lives have become entwined in the legal
system – is the backbone of child-friendly justice, a movement that calls for a dramatic shift in the
ways that our justice systems interact with children. Child-friendly justice embraces the idea that
courts can be a powerful tool to positively shape children’s lives and at the same time recognises the
reality that contact with the legal system is all too often more a source of additional trauma than a
remedy for children.