The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child Adopts General Comment No. 27 in Geneva
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has adopted General Comment No. 27 on children’s rights to access to justice and to an effective remedy, as confirmed in the United Nations Office at Geneva’s account of the closing of its 101st session on 28 September 2026.[1] The preparation included consultations on the concept between May and December 2024 and a further round on the draft between April and June 2025.[2] The subject is broader than children appearing before criminal courts: the concept note expressly rejected that narrow understanding and envisaged routes to redress across judicial, administrative and other settings.[3] The underlying question is simple to state and difficult to answer. What can a child actually do when the person or institution responsible for protecting a right is also responsible for violating it?
A distinction is necessary at the outset. The adoption of GC was confirmed at the closing of the session. As of 30 September 2026 the authenticated adopted text has not been published yet – and is expected to be published in a few weeks; the publicly accessible document remains the consultation draft.[4] The discussion below therefore addresses the significance of the adoption and the ideas developed in its preparatory record, not the final wording or numbering.
The case for taking this development seriously does not depend on announcing a wholly new right. In General Comment No. 5, the Committee had already stated in 2003 that “for rights to have meaning, effective remedies must be available to redress violations”, and that this requirement was implicit in the Convention.[5] The importance of the present initiative lies elsewhere: it places the practical ability to claim a right at the centre of the discussion. Recognising children as rights holders is one legal undertaking; ensuring that they can require an answer from those who exercise power over them is another.
The right to challenge the person who protects you
The most revealing case is not necessarily a child who has no adult to turn to. It may be a child surrounded by adults, each of whom is authorised to decide what should happen next. Consider a hypothetical complaint against a school, a care institution or a parent. If the child must first get permission from the authority being challenged, it gives that person the power to prevent the complaint from being heard.
Paragraphs 29 and 30 of the consultation draft addressed this problem directly. The former considered situations in which parents were unwilling or unable to act, or had a conflict of interest, including where a parent might be responsible for the violation. The latter included mechanisms that children could access without parental consent, taking account of their maturity and best interests.[6] These provisions are important especially where a child cannot rely on the adult who would ordinarily help them. A legal system must work when ordinary relations of trust fail. Parents may provide essential advice, reassurance and practical assistance, but a disagreement with a parent should not, by itself, leave the child without a route to redress.
Domestic reform should examine what happens when a child wishes to proceed and the supporting adult objects. If that objection is enough to stop the claim, the adult’s role extends beyond assistance to control over whether the child’s grievance can be heard at all. We should ask the question: does support enable the child to make a claim, or does it allow an adult to decide whether the claim may exist at all? This is really important where evolving capacities are invoked. The draft described them as a “positive and enabling process”, not a justification for restricting autonomy and self-expression.[7] Capacity should therefore help determine the form and intensity of support; it should not become a convenient explanation for leaving a child without any effective route to redress.
For comparative family-law scholarship in Central Europe, the immediate task is to examine the relationship between the child, the parent, the appointed guardian and legal counsel. The titles of those offices do not answer the relevant questions. Who can initiate proceedings when the adults disagree? Who must convey the child’s views, who assesses the child’s interests, and who can challenge a failure by the representative? A system may formally represent a child while leaving the child unable to contest the representation itself.
What consulting thousands of children can, and cannot, establish
The first consultation stage produced 315 submissions and outcomes from more than 141 consultations, with more than 82 consultations involving at least 7,215 children, according to the Committee’s background materials.[8] These are figures for that stage, not a verified count of unique participants across the whole drafting process. They demonstrate the scale of the exercise, but cannot by themselves establish how much influence children had on the eventual wording.
More revealing is the methodology. The April 2025 facilitator’s guide told organisers that the second round sought children’s views on the draft itself, “not to collect experiences or general ideas”, and explained that children could influence the document by engaging with its text.[9] Children were thus invited to evaluate proposed standards, rather than only to supply accounts of what had happened to them. The difference is very important: a child may contribute to the design of a legal rule without being asked to disclose a personal injury as the price of participation.
The same guide required feedback to children on how their views had been acted upon.[10] This offers a demanding standard for judging the consultation itself. How were proposals translated into legal language? Which disagreements remained unresolved? What explanation reached the children whose suggestions were not accepted? The public record should be assessed against these questions, rather than treating a participation total as proof of meaningful influence.
There is a further lesson for implementation. If children were competent to comment on the proposed international standards, there is little justification for excluding them from evaluating domestic complaint mechanisms. Their contribution should not end when a general comment is adopted. A child who can identify why an institutional rule fails should also be able to ask whether the institution has changed it.
Beyond the courtroom, but not beyond accountability
The GC 27 understands access to justice through both judicial and non-judicial avenues. The draft text listed, among others, human rights institutions, children’s ombudspersons, administrative complaint mechanisms, business grievance mechanisms and customary systems.[11] This is not to make courts irrelevant. Paragraph 11 preserved access to the formal judicial system, including where other mechanisms had failed to provide relief, and placed responsibility for oversight of non-judicial mechanisms on the State.[12]
There are good reasons for children to seek remedies outside a courtroom. A school may be able to correct an exclusion before litigation could achieve anything useful. An ombudsperson’s office may offer a setting in which a child feels able to explain what has happened. Much depends, however, on what follows that first conversation. Can the institution secure a response? If the matter falls outside its powers, will a referral actually reach someone able to act? Is an independent challenge available if the complaint is dismissed? An approachable procedure is of limited value when the child has no effective means of contesting its outcome.
The difficulty is usually even more apparent where responsibilities are divided. A school directs a child to an administrative office; the office requires action by a guardian; the guardian is then referred to another complaints body. Every referral may comply with the rules, while the original violation remains unresolved. Institutional records might show that each body has dealt with the matter correctly. The child, meanwhile, is still waiting for someone to put it right.
Evaluation should follow the complaint across those institutional boundaries. Alongside each body’s caseload, we need to ask where children’s claims stall, whether referrals lead to action and who remains responsible until an effective remedy is secured.
Korczak’s challenge to adult goodwill
For a Central European readership, Janusz Korczak offers more than a historical introduction. In his institutional experiments with children’s self-government, children could bring complaints before a court of peers, and staff were not exempt: Sven Hartman records Korczak’s account of having been sued five times within half a year.[13] The significant feature is not the number of cases. It is the refusal to place the benevolent educator beyond challenge.
Hartman reproduces Korczak’s explanation that children were entitled to have their problems considered seriously and fairly, rather than left to the teacher’s goodwill or mood; the child had lacked a right to protest.[14] This concerns the structure of power. A promise to act kindly remains under the control of the person making the promise. A procedure through which a child can challenge that person changes the relationship.
Read in this light, the present debate is not simply about making adult justice gentler. It is about making adult authority answerable. A teacher may care deeply for a pupil and still make an unjust decision. A parent may act sincerely and still have interests that diverge from the child’s. An institution may describe itself as protective and still require an independent mechanism through which its conduct can be questioned.
Korczak’s approach provides a lens through which to read GC27: respect becomes institutionally credible when children can question its absence without depending entirely on the goodwill of those they question.
A remedy must arrive while it can still matter
One of the consultation draft’s most important sentences was also one of its simplest: “the sense of time is not the same for children and adults”. Delay has consequences that procedural calendars do not always capture. Paragraph 35 linked delay to development and opportunities and stated that reasonable time “should be construed” in light of the potential effects, ongoing nature and possible repetition of the violation, as well as the child’s age and circumstances, while preserving due process.[15] The point is not simply that children find waiting difficult. It is that a remedy can lose much of its value while the proceedings remain formally pending.
For a child excluded from education, for example, that loss accumulates with each missed lesson. A later finding that the exclusion was unlawful may be important, but it does not itself restore the instruction, relationships or opportunities lost in the meantime. The adequacy of the legal response therefore depends partly on what happens before a final decision. Leaving the child out of school throughout the proceedings may prolong the very harm for which redress is sought.
The draft’s provisions on imminent or foreseeable harm, interim measures, recovery and reintegration, and the execution of decisions provide a basis for addressing this problem.[16] Speed alone is of course an inadequate measure of justice.Children need time to understand proceedings, obtain advice and express their views; shortening a process at the expense of those opportunities can undermine its fairness. Developmental urgency is a much more useful standard: an assessment of the time a fair process requires and the consequences of delay for the particular child.
Children should also receive an understandable explanation of both the decision and the process that lead to reaching it, including how their views had been considered.[17] Paragraph 53 called for a child-adapted explanation of the outcome and the process leading to it, including how the child’s views had been considered. Replacing technical terms with simpler words will accomplish only part of that task. For the explanation to be useful, the child should be able to understand what will change, what happens next and where to turn if the decision is never put into effect. Explanation and execution are connected: without the first, the child may be unable to recognise the failure of the second.
What the adoption should change
A general comment is interpretive guidance from the treaty’s monitoring body, not an amendment to the Convention or a new treaty requiring ratification.[18] The care with which its authority is described should match the care with which its implementation is demanded. Neither calling it automatically binding in every detail nor dismissing it as optional advice adequately explains the relationship between the Committee’s guidance and States’ existing treaty obligations.
The question for legislatures, courts and independent institutions is consequently concrete. For each kind of alleged violation, can a child obtain independent advice, initiate or trigger a procedure, challenge a conflict of interest, receive timely protection and secure implementation of the outcome? The answers will differ between legal systems. What should not differ is the insistence that the entire route be examined, including the points at which children silently drop out.
The consultation draft’s proposal for disaggregated data on mechanisms, outcomes and children’s experiences offers a basis for that work.[19] Counting complaints alone would be inadequate: an increase might indicate worsening violations, greater trust, better information or some combination of these. Evaluation should instead ask what happened after the complaint, whether the child was safer for having made it, and whether the underlying practice changed.
The adoption of General Comment No. 27 provides an occasion to move this assessment into the ordinary work of children’s rights institutions. Its lasting importance should not be measured by the number of national policies that cite it. It should be measured by whether a child who challenges a powerful adult receives something more reliable than that adult’s discretion. Korczak’s legacy leaves contemporary law with a question: who answers when the child says that the person in charge is wrong?
[1] United Nations Office at Geneva, ‘Committee on the Rights of the Child Closes One Hundred and First Session’ (Meeting Summary, 28 September 2026), https://www.ungeneva.org/en/news-media/meeting-summary/2026/09/le-comite-des-droits-de-lenfant-acheve-les-travaux-de-sa-101e accessed 30 September 2026.
[2] Child Rights Connect, ‘General Comments’, https://childrightsconnect.org/general-comments/ accessed 30 September 2026, sections on consultations on the concept note and on the draft.
[3] Committee on the Rights of the Child, Concept Note: General Comment on Children’s Rights to Access to Justice and Effective Remedies (2024), paras 3 and 9–13, https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/crc/gcomments/gc27/gc27-concept-note.pdf accessed 30 September 2026. General Comment No. 24 remains the principal guidance concerning children alleged or recognised to have infringed criminal law.
[4] Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, ‘Draft General Comment No. 27 on Children’s Right to Access to Justice and to an Effective Remedy’, https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/draft-general-comment-no-27-childrens-right-access accessed 30 September 2026; Committee on the Rights of the Child, Draft General Comment No. 27 (202x) on Children’s Right to Access to Justice and to an Effective Remedy (public-consultation version, 2025), https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/crc/cfi-gc27/crc-gc27-public-consultation.docx accessed 30 September 2026. All draft paragraph references in this commentary refer to this version.
[5] Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003): General Measures of Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, CRC/GC/2003/5, paras 24–25, https://clr.africanchildforum.org/General%20Comments%20Docs/legal-instruments-ungc-gc-5_en.pdf accessed 30 September 2026.
[6] Draft General Comment No. 27 (n 5), paras 29–30.
[7] Ibid, para 15(e).
[8] OHCHR, background and consultation webpage (n 5); Child Rights Connect (n 3), section ‘Consultations on the Concept Note: May 2024–December 2024’.
[9] Child Rights Connect, Facilitator’s Guide for Consultations with Children (April 2025), 2, https://childrightsconnect.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/final-methodology-crc-gc27-2025-1.pdf accessed 30 September 2026.
[10] Ibid, 3 and 5.
[11] Draft General Comment No. 27 (n 5), paras 11–12.
[12] Ibid, para 11.
[13] Sven Hartman, ‘Janusz Korczak’s Legacy: An Inestimable Source of Inspiration’, in The Child’s Right to Respect: Janusz Korczak’s Legacy, Lectures on Today’s Challenges for Children (Council of Europe Publishing 2009), 17, https://www.coe.int/t/commissioner/source/prems/publicationkorczak_en.pdf accessed 30 September 2026.
[14] Ibid, 18–19, reproducing Korczak’s account of the purpose of the court.
[15] Draft General Comment No. 27 (n 5), para 35.
[16] Ibid, paras 18(b), 59 and 61.
[17] Ibid, para 53.
[18] Child Rights Connect (n 3), explanation of the role of general comments; Concept Note (n 4), para 16, describing the objective as providing authoritative guidance. This distinction concerns the legal character of the instrument, not the binding force of the underlying Convention obligations.
[19] Draft General Comment No. 27 (n 5), para 84.
References
Child Rights Connect, ‘General Comments’, https://childrightsconnect.org/general-comments/ accessed 30 September 2026.
Child Rights Connect, Committee on the Rights of the Child General Comment on Children’s Right to Access to Justice and to an Effective Remedy (GC.27): Facilitator’s Guide for Consultations with Children (April 2025), https://childrightsconnect.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/final-methodology-crc-gc27-2025-1.pdf accessed 30 September 2026.
Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 5 (2003): General Measures of Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, CRC/GC/2003/5 (27 November 2003), https://clr.africanchildforum.org/General%20Comments%20Docs/legal-instruments-ungc-gc-5_en.pdf accessed 30 September 2026.
Committee on the Rights of the Child, Concept Note: General Comment on Children’s Rights to Access to Justice and Effective Remedies (2024), https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/crc/gcomments/gc27/gc27-concept-note.pdf accessed 30 September 2026.
Committee on the Rights of the Child, Draft General Comment No. 27 (202x) on Children’s Right to Access to Justice and to an Effective Remedy (public-consultation version, 2025), https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/crc/cfi-gc27/crc-gc27-public-consultation.docx accessed 30 September 2026.
Hartman, Sven, ‘Janusz Korczak’s Legacy: An Inestimable Source of Inspiration’, in The Child’s Right to Respect: Janusz Korczak’s Legacy, Lectures on Today’s Challenges for Children (Council of Europe Publishing 2009), especially 17–19, https://www.coe.int/t/commissioner/source/prems/publicationkorczak_en.pdf accessed 30 September 2026.
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, ‘Draft General Comment No. 27 on Children’s Right to Access to Justice and to an Effective Remedy’ (background and consultation webpage), https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/draft-general-comment-no-27-childrens-right-access accessed 30 September 2026.
United Nations Office at Geneva, ‘Committee on the Rights of the Child Closes One Hundred and First Session after Adopting Concluding Observations on Reports of Kazakhstan, Lesotho, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Uganda and Tanzania’ (Meeting Summary, 28 September 2026), https://www.ungeneva.org/en/news-media/meeting-summary/2026/09/le-comite-des-droits-de-lenfant-acheve-les-travaux-de-sa-101e accessed 30 September 2026.
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