The following videos are from CLEBC course Access to Justice for Children Conference: Law Practice and Children’s Human Rights, 2015.
The program, now available in our Webinar Archive, provides the foundation lawyers need regarding the nature of children’s legal rights, and the reality and complexity of the lives of children entitled to benefit from those rights. It links that foundation to the daily work lawyers do, suggesting practical ways for lawyers to effectively work with children to identify breaches of their legal rights and to provide remedies for them.
Young People’s Views on Justice: Their Lived Realities
- examines young people’s day to day experiences—their lived realities—from their perspectives
- looks at the ways in which legal problems arise in a wide variety of contexts in their lives
- considers young people’s unique perspectives on the ways in which the justice system, whether dealing with administrative processes, alternative dispute resolution processes, or court processes, does respond and could respond to those realities and legal challenges
Overcoming Barriers: Case Examples
Analyzes ways in which lawyers, working with children and others, can address access to justice barriers for children by using three compelling examples of ways to access justice for them.
- Indigenous children in care
- trans children
- young children whose mothers are incarcerated
The Canadian legal profession is currently engaged in critically important discussions about access to justice. Ensuring access to justice for children is a key component of those discussions. Children and youth have broad entitlements under domestic and international law which apply across all areas of legal practice and have the potential to shape their everyday lives in positive ways and to protect them when they become involved in court, alternative dispute resolution (ADR), or administrative processes. But understanding and implementation of those rights is lacking, especially when it comes to high-risk and marginalized children, transgender and First Nations children in particular.