Abstract
The global disconnect between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), has been described as ‘a missed opportunity’. Since devolution, the Welsh Government has actively pursued a ‘sustainable development’ and a ‘children’s rights’ agenda. However, until recently, these separate agendas also did not contribute to each other, although they culminated in two radical and innovative pieces of legislation; the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure (2013) and the Well-being and Future Generations (Wales) Act (2015). This article offers a case study that draws upon the SDGs and the CRC and considers how recent guidance to Welsh public bodies for implementation attempts to contribute to a more integrated approach. It suggests that successful integration requires recognition of the importance of including children in deliberative processes, using both formal mechanisms, such as local authority youth forums, pupil councils and a national youth parliament, and informal mechanisms, such as child-led research, that enable children to initiate and influence sustainable change.
Highlights
The international agenda for children’s rights and the agenda on sustainable development have rapidly evolved over the last 30 years, in parallel and not symbiotically
The provenance of sustainable development can be found in the 1987 Brundtland Report which defined sustainable development as ‘[d]evelopment that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, Ch.2 para 1)
Since the end of the 1980s, discourse on development led to the Millennium Development Goals and, in 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UNDP n.d.a)
Summary
The international agenda for children’s rights and the agenda on sustainable development have rapidly evolved over the last 30 years, in parallel and not symbiotically. Using Wales as a case study (Denzin and Lincoln 2011), it focuses on the first two decades of the devolved government (1999–2020), and offers insights from analysis of law reform, policy and practice on children’s rights and sustainable development. As part of the examination of participative practices in Wales, this article features a discussion on the establishment of a National Youth Parliament (1999–2019) and the child led ‘Lleisiau Bach Little Voices’ projects (2014–2020) Both projects have contributed to local and national decision making on children’s rights and sustainable development. The article concludes by explaining how this case study on Wales provides an example of how to build on a children’s rights approach to sustainable development, while embedding participative practices and strengthening legal enforceability. Children’s rights, by contrast, emerged as a policy priority which would be woven into the fabric of Welsh devolved government by the new polity itself (Williams 2013b)
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