The UN Convention for the Rights of the Child has emerged as a central yardstick in assessing policies and practices concerning children. But how do we measure the extent of implementation? And what can social science methods contribute to legal evaluations? This roundtable is part of a LawTransfrom/Save the Childen project headed by Malcolm Langford.
Introduction by Malcolm Langford in dialogue with Marit Skivenes and Karl Harald Søvig.
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Malcolm Langford is Co-Director at the Centre of
Law and Social Transformation and Senior Researcher at CMI. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Fridtjof Nansen Institute and the Co-Director of Global School on Socio-Economic Rights. He is also former Research Fellow at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights and Director of the Socio-Economic Rights Programme. His recent publications include Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: Symbols or Substance? (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014), edited with B. Cousins, J. Dugard and T. Madlingozi.
Professor Marit Skivenes has a PhD in political
science and is a faculty at the Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen, Norway. Skivenes is the PI of several international research projects on child protection system, including Norway, Finland, England and the U.S. Skivenes has written numerous scientific works on child protection decision making, children´s rights, migrant children, and child welfare system and broader welfare issues, as well as the impact of communication and publicity in theory and practice. Her work has been published in Journal of Children´s Rights; Child and Family Social work; Human Relations; International Social work; Acta Sociological, to mention some. She has published two books on whistle blowing, and co-edited three books on Oxford University Press with a comparative focus on child welfare systems (2011); child welfare and migrants (2015), and; the role of courts in child protection decision-making (2016).
Dr. juris Karl Harald Søvig is professor of law
at the faculty of law, University of Bergen, where he is leader of the PhD program and chairing the research group on administrative law. He has previously worked as a temporary judge at the district and high court and as ad hoc chairman of the county board. His research has focused on different forms of coercive measures within the welfare state, as well as rights of the children. He has authored a report for the government on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into the Norwegian legal system and chaired an expert committee drafting a new act on adoption (NOU 2014:9). His most recent project was PROVIR (Provision of welfare to irregular migrants) funded by the Norwegian research council. He is vice chair of the European Association of Health Law.