Seen and Heard: Kirsten Sandberg on the Ombudsman for Children's Office

May 09, 2014, 03:04 PM

Kirsten Sandberg, chairperson of the UN Committee of the Rights of the Child and professor of Law at the University of Oslo, talks to Louise Denvir about the benefits of a country having an Ombudsman for children.

See more from Kirsten Sandberg talking about children's rights on our It's Your Right Vimeo Channel:

https://vimeo.com/94941340

Visit the It's Your Right website for more information on children's rights and the It's Your Right campaign: http://itsyourright.ie/

Transcript Below

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Kirsten Sandberg; I’m Kirsten Sandberg, I’m the chairperson of the UN committee on the Rights of the Child, i’m also a professor of law at the University of Oslo.

Question; Professor Sandberg, perhaps you could tell me a little bit about your role as well?

Kirsten Sandberg; Oh yes, Our job is to monitor the implementation of the convention on the rights of the child and my job as a Chairperson is to chair all the meetings where we have states coming to Geneva on dialogue on how they implement the rights.

Question: This is a big day, it’s the tenth anniversary of the Ombudsman for Children’s Office, what are your views on that?

Kirsten Sandberg; I think it’s fantastic that a country has an ombudsperson because that’s not self evident and to me it looks as if Emily Logan has done an amazing job as a Children’s Ombudsperson, she’s really dedicated.

Question; And as it’s the 10th anniversary of the Ombudsman of Children’s Office, what do you think would be its key successes?

Kirsten Sandberg; The benefits of having an ombudsperson is definitely that children are much more visible in society and  so children are made visible for the politicians and children’s issues are brought up all the time with those in power and also they give a voice to children, the Children’s Ombudsperson listens to children a lot so you get it all the way from the children on the ground, it’s brought through the Ombudsperson’s office then onwards to the politicians.

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END