Present Imperfect Episode 2: Professor Cecile Aptel on Children and Justice

UNICEF Innocenti presents Present Imperfect, a podcast series exploring the evolution of child rights over the past three decades - and the decades to come, 35 years after the approval of the Convention on the Rights of the Child or CRC by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989. In this episode Professor Cecile Aptel, Deputy Director at UNICEF Innocenti with several years of experience at Fletcher and Harvard Universities, will guide us through the complex interaction between children and the law. Children interact with justice systems for many reasons because they have violated laws, because they are victims or survivors or witnesses or are interested party in the criminal proceedings. Children need the protection of the law and interventions of the justice systems to provide them with the protection and guarantee their rights. Cecile will explain why children need access to justice and what is meant when referring broadly to justice for children, as well as the differences between juvenile justice and more broadly, justice for children. She will also guide us through the Convention on the Rights of the Child overarching principles for justice, including crime prevention, diversion or exclusion from criminal process, rehabilitation rather than punishing children, minimum age of criminal responsibility, gender differences in delinquent behavior and pathways to justice. Cecile also talks of children involved in atrocities such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, either as victims or perpetrators.