The Committee on the Rights of the Child & Freedom of Expression

Abstract

The right to freedom of expression is protected in many international and regional treaties and international instruments. These treaties are applicable to children in their capacity as being part of ‘everyone’. The Convention on the Rights of the Child protects the child’s right to free expression which is firmly-rooted throughout the whole of the Convention. The protection of the child’s right to freedom of expression in particular can be seen as reaffirming that this general right to freedom of expression also applies to children but also introduces added specificities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the work done by the monitoring body of the Convention, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, with regard to the promotion of the child’s right to freedom of expression.

Keywords: freedom of expression, convention on the rights of the child