Children’s participation in international organizations: Individual petitions in the United Nations

Recent scholarship in international relations has shown that nonstate actors’ access to international institutions has expanded, including for victims of human rights abuse. Yet, although children are protected by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and are considered ideal victims, they face significant barriers to justice. In 2011, children gained direct access to submit petitions to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. Who are these children, and what do they petition about? We introduce novel data on children’s petitions, including country targets, topics, ages, legal representation, and decisions. We find that migration is a dominant topic of petitions and that young children are unlikely to be the authors of petitions. In contrast to scholarship for other treaty bodies, we also find that children are overwhelmingly accompanied by lawyers and family members in the Committee on the Rights of the Child. This article centers children themselves as active participants in international governance and provides meaningful insights into both academic and policy debates over children’s agency and nonstate access to international institutions.