INTRODUCTION

The child's right to be heard in all matters affecting the child, including the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity, is not only one of the core elements of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), but can also be distilled from other sources of international and regional human rights. This right includes the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, for example in family law proceedings. The child's right to be heard is a fundamental aspect of children's participation and has led to extensive research and policy on ‘child participation’, although the term itself does not appear in international and regional human rights documents.

The child's right to participate in legal proceedings encompasses the right to be heard directly or indirectly, a right to representation, and procedural rights such as the right to commence proceedings, access to all relevant files, or to appeal, as an independent party to the proceedings with legal status or indirectly via legal or other forms of representation. The UNCRC and other international and regional instruments cover elements of the child's right to participate in legal proceedings. The relevant sources are covered in this chapter, both binding and non-binding, international and regional. This chapter provides a foundation for the other chapters in this Handbook. It discusses the core themes related to child participation in legal proceedings which will also be dealt with in each corresponding country chapter: the types of proceedings in which children may participate, the forms of participation available to children, conditions for participation, the location in which participation ought to take place and the method of communication, and the role of information and feedback in the participation process. For each theme, the rights or guidelines provided by the international and regional instruments are described.

From a human rights perspective, Article 12 of the UNCRC is regarded as the foundation for the child's right to participate. The UNCRC, both generally and Article 12 specifically, was the catalyst for further international and regional developments on the topic of child participation.