Vegan Children’s Rights in the Context of New UN Guidance
Vegan Children’s Rights and the Children’s Rights Approach to the Environment with a Special Focus on Climate Change
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child will today (18-09-2023) launch new authoritative guidance (General comment 26) on specific rights of the child as they relate to the environment and climate change. The guidance does not directly address the rights of vegan children but the principles contained in the guidance offer a robust foundation to advocating for vegan rights in the context of environmental and climate concerns.
What is the aim of the guidance?
The Committee has introduced a child rights-based approach to the development of environmental policies and practices to support a healthy environment and help deal with climate change. The approach requires the full consideration of all children’s rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its optional Protocols (the Convention).
The guidance outlines both substantive and procedural elements of the rights it refers to and advises states to make its guidance accessible to children in age-appropriate formats so that all children have access to information about their rights and duties towards them.
The Committee also wants states to put specific child-friendly complaints measures in place so that children can assert their right to be included and heard as legitimate and relevant stakeholders in social justice as it relates to the environment and climate protection issues.
The Committee wants children to exercise their rights to help bring about rights compliant environmental policies. Specifically, it mentions the right to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, information and education, participation and being heard, and having access to effective complaint mechanisms and remedies.
What are the Committee’s objectives?
The Committee’s objectives are set out as follows:
A. Emphasise the urgent need to address the adverse effects of environmental degradation, with a special focus on climate change, on the enjoyment of children’s rights.
B. Promote a holistic understanding of children’s rights as they apply to environmental protection.
C. Clarify the obligations of States to the Convention and provide authoritative guidance on legislative, administrative and other appropriate measures to address environmental harm, with a special focus on climate change.
How does the guidance support protection for vegan pupils?
General Comment 26 falls short of directly including the importance of the child’s right to freedom of belief in its authoritative guidance. However, the guidance reiterates that children’s rights are indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated.
All children under the Convention on the Rights of the Child have the right to freedom of belief. As such, vegan pupils have a right to be included as legitimate stakeholders in the development of policies relating to the environment and climate In this light, principles supporting vegan children can be observed:
1. Vegan children must not be discriminated against
Under Article 14 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child States must respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. On this ground, vegan children must not be unlawfully limited in their vegan practice, they must be supported, and they must not be encouraged or coerced to adopt non-vegans beliefs and practices.
2. Vegan children have a right to be heard
Under Article 12 of the Convention, children capable of forming their own views have the right to be heard. In relation to this right, the Committee wants states to ensure that:
Relevant adults proactively seek and give “due weight” to the views of children at all stages of the development of measures dealing with the significant and long-term environmental challenges that affect them.
Drawing on this guidance, vegan children in educational contexts must not be silenced, and their views must be respected and validated.
Age-appropriate, accessible, and empowering measures are to be put in place to ensure children can be heard. The views of children in a minorities should be further supported if necessary to express themselves and be heard.
Based on these provisions, and the fact that vegan children are likely to be a minority in many contexts, it is reasonable to infer that vegan children in relevant contexts, such as in education, must be empowered, supported and assisted when trying to express their views if necessary.
Access to child-sensitive complaint procedures and remedies are created and available when a child’s right to be heard in the environmental context is disregarded.
Drawing on this guidance, vegan children must have access to effective complaints mechanisms to report unfair treatment on the grounds of their veganism.
3. Vegan children have the right to group together and protest
Under articles 13 and 15 of the Convention all children have the right to express themselves and assemble for the purposes of peaceful protest. The Committee wants governments to:
Recognise and support the positive contribution children make to environmental sustainability and climate justice, and recognise their input as an important means of civil and political engagement.
Based on this guidance, the views of vegan children should be regarded as extremely valuable.
Provide a safe environment for children to protest.
Provide a safe and empowering context for initiatives organised by children to defend their human rights in schools and other settings.
Drawing on this provision, it is reasonable to expect that vegan children will be supported and encouraged in educational settings and schools will shore up their equality, bullying and harassment policies to protect the vegan child’s right to effectively defend their human rights, and participate fully in the mission to deal with environmental and climate issues.
Teachers, the police, social workers, and all relevant adults involved with children are to be trained on children’s civil and political rights.
Drawing on this guidance, we can reasonably expect that veganism should feature in training as a good example of an existing protected belief in which vegan children already engage with their human right to adopt an alternative and sustainable lifestyle.
4. Vegan children have a right to be informed
Under articles 13 and 17 of the Convention, children have the right to information. The Committee informs governments that they have an obligation to:
Ensure children have age-appropriate information about the causes, effects and actual and potential sources of climate and environmental harm.
Based on this, entrenching vegan views in literature and education is reasonable and has enormous value.
Ensure age-appropriate information is made available about sustainable lifestyles.
On this guidance, it is reasonable to expect state supported information about veganism as an example of a more sustainable lifestyle.
5. Vegan children now have a right to education that looks to their values
Under articles 28 and 29 of the Convention, all children have a right to education. The Committee recognises that:
Education is a cornerstone of a child rights approach to the environment.
Education must respect environmental values.
A rights-based environmental education should be transformative, child-centred, child-friendly, empowering and inclusive.
Drawing from this, vegan-inclusive education must be regarded as important in the context of the Committee’s mission.
A rights-based environmental education is related to other ethical values entrenched in human rights.
This statement in the guidance reiterates that the right to freedom of belief, which guarantees the right to live according to vegan convictions, is significant and relevant in education.
A children’s rights-based environmental education must offer children the skills they need to face environmental challenges, think about them, and solve them in a responsible way. One example given in the guidance of how to solve environmental problems responsibly is by adopting sustainable lifestyles and consumption.
Arguably, logically, this means that age-appropriate education on veganism has enormous value to the Committee’s mission.
6. Vegan children have the right to be protected from violence
Under article 19 of the Convention, all children have the right to be free from all forms of violence. The Committee instructs governments that all children must also be protected from exposure to violence, including violence inflicted on animals.
This means that violence towards animals is unacceptable, children must not be required to participate in any way in cruelty to nonhuman animals, and specifically, when vegan children invoke their right not participate or be exposed to animal cruelty in educational settings, it must be taken seriously and acted upon.
In addition
The Committee recognises that the right to a standard of living that facilitates children’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral, and social development includes food security.
On this point, the vegan perspective offers valuable insights on the issue of food security and has enormous value.
The right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment requires (among others) the immediate transformation of industrial agriculture and fisheries to produce healthy and sustainable food.
On this point, the vegan perspective has great significance.
Conclusion
The new authoritative guidance from the United Nations Committee of the Rights of the Child is comprehensive and does not explicitly refer to the right of the vegan child or the right of the child to freedom of belief. Nevertheless, General comment 26 marks a moment in time when vegan children and vegan parents can reasonably expect to benefit from substantially increased support from governments, their agencies and agents. The voice of vegan children must be heard, vegan-inclusive education is now imperative, and vegan children must be supported and empowered to make full use of complaints measures when their rights are violated, their needs are not met, when they feel dismissed and undervalued, and experience unfairness or discrimination.