Who Writes This?
I teach Childhood Studies and Children’s Rights at UCL, and one question has stayed with me throughout my teaching and research: what use is a right if the person who holds it doesn’t know it’s theirs or how to use it?
Children’s rights can sound like something abstract, legal or far removed from everyday life. But they belong to every child, and they matter in the ordinary places where childhood happens: at home, at school, online, in friendships, and in the decisions adults make with and about children.
The Rights Compass grew from that question. A way of making children’s rights easier to understand, explore and use, one right at a time, explained for different ages and always connected back to real life.
Every other right in the Convention is read through these four.
They are the four points of the compass, and the reason this site is colour-coded the way it is.
Four principles hold up all the rest
Non-discrimination
Article 2
Best interests
Article 3
Life, survival and development
Article 6
Participation
Article 12
Free worksheets:
Four worksheets, tailored by age. Free to download, and free to photocopy for classroom and group use.
The age ranges are a guide. Choose the worksheet that best suits the child or group you're working with.
For schools, hospitals, families and care settings
A printable workbook is in development. If you would like to hear when it is ready, or send me your thoughts on what you would like in it, please contact me.
What you'll find here: children's rights, week by week
What a child can actually say when a right isn't being respected.
Words that work
Four age levels
Every right explained for 6–8, 9–11, 12–14 and 15–17, because the same right is a different conversation at 7 and 17.
One right a week
Over a year, we work through the Convention article by article.