Global Study on Faith and Children’s Rights

The first ever global study focusing on the role of religious leaders and religious communities in promoting children’s rights was launched recently in Geneva to honour the 30th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The study “Faith and Children’s Rights” is intended as a resource to support the efforts of religious leaders and religious communities to expand their advocacy and action, mobilise new partners and further engage their own faith communities to protect children from violence and promote their healthy development. It provides perspectives from seven religious traditions: the Bahá’í Faith, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and the Sikhism. In total, these traditions have more than 5.5 billion adherents globally.
The study highlights the often-significant role that diverse communities of the world’s faith traditions have played in the preparation, adoption, ratification and implementation of the CRC over the past three decades. It recognises innovative work and good practices carried out every day to further children’s rights and contribute to child protection by religious groups. It also contains new ideas for collaboration and recommendations for further action by all stakeholders, including fostering interreligious dialogue as a way to facilitate the protection and promotion of children rights.