Building Children's Futures project featured in Ireland’s National Policy Framework for Children and Young People

Ireland commits to embedding a children’s rights approach to public policy and decision-making in its 2023-2028 national strategy.

Following last year’s World Children’s Day, the Government of Ireland’s Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) published Ireland’s long-awaited new strategy for children: Young Ireland: National Policy Framework for Children and Young People, 2023-2028.

The new policy framework directly features the work of Eurochild’s EU-funded project Building Children’s Futures, which will design and embed child rights impact assessments (CRIA) into public decision-making involving children and young people. Embedding a CRIA approach is identified among the steps needed to create an enabling environment to ensure that children and young people are a core consideration of policy and decision-making. Once a prototype for the CRIA has been developed, the DCEDIY will roll it out across the government and state agencies.

The use of CRIAs in Ireland should also build on the ‘Youth Test’ already in place in some EU Member States, as recommended by the Report of the Conference on the Future of Europe and advocated for by youth organisations.

To support the development of a prototype CRIA, partners are carrying out important forthcoming research that will be released in 2024:

• The Children’s Rights Alliance is looking into the use of CRIAs or similar impact assessments and their use in some other countries across Europe and beyond to help inform the discussion around and the development of a CRIA for Ireland.
• The UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre at the University of Galway, together with Foróige, have carried out research together with children and young people to look at child rights- in decision-making in times of emergency.

The key role of the Irish government in the Building Children’s Futures project is a very encouraging example of how national governments can demonstrate leadership by engaging with the wider sector in supporting children’s rights in public decision-making.

Eurochild is using the evidence of CRIA implementation in Ireland to inform the EU Network for Children’s Rights and the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child 2021-2024.

More information

• The Building Children’s Futures project page.
• Contact Ciaran O’Donnell, Partnerships and Programmes Coordinator