{"id":254,"date":"2026-05-11T09:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T08:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/?p=254"},"modified":"2026-05-12T12:34:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T11:34:58","slug":"continuing-the-conversation-why-incorporation-of-the-uncrc-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/2026\/05\/11\/continuing-the-conversation-why-incorporation-of-the-uncrc-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Continuing the Conversation: Why Incorporation of the UNCRC Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written by Prof Bronagh Byrne. Posted on 11 May 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Professor Bronagh Byrne responds to a post by young person, Sarah Martin (found here<\/a>). In doing so, she highlights how the conversation about incorporating the UNCRC is not new in Northern Ireland. However, incorporation in Scotland, contemporary challenges, the clear benefits from incorporation, and a background of children’s rights failures, are all the more reason to open the conversation… again. If we are to do that, she argues, we must listen directly to children and young people themselves.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent blog<\/a> with the Commissioner for Children and Young People, I shared details of a project called Incorporation Conversations. Incorporation Conversations<\/em> is a collaborative project with the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People (NICCY) which aims to support capacity building and develop evidence-based discussion around incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Incorporation here refers to making the UNCRC part of domestic law. The series of four initial events, which took place from March 2025 until February 2026, sought to facilitate open and honest conversations among key stakeholders on the role, benefits, challenges and barriers (actual and perceived) of incorporation in Northern Ireland, and ways of overcoming identified barriers. The stakeholders targeted across the events were the children\u2019s sector, legal professionals, faith-based organisations, and parents. There are many more conversations to be had with other equally important stakeholders. This first round of Incorporation Conversations <\/em>was about \u2018opening\u2019 the conversation\u2026. Again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I say again because discussion on incorporation of the UNCRC in Northern Ireland is not new. This was previously brought to the fore as part of the, to date, ill-fated NI Bill of Rights process. A Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland remains one of the outstanding issues of the 1998 Good Friday\/Belfast Agreement. In response to its mandate under the Good Friday Agreement, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) delivered the advice on a Bill of Rights to the British Government in 2008. Progress on this has, however, stalled since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, Scotland made the UNCRC part of its law. This has been an exciting time for children\u2019s rights activists and scholars across the UK and beyond. It shows what can be achieved when set a clear legal precedent, and barometer, for the rest of the UK to take children\u2019s rights much more seriously.  What this could look like in Northern Ireland will be part of the discussions. Questions to be considered (among others) include the value added of UNCRC incorporation over and above the Human Rights Act (1998), how such an Act could be effectively monitored and enforced, and conflicts between devolved and reserved matters.  Research by Kilkelly, Lundy and Byrne<\/a> indicates that there are a number of benefits to be had from incorporation \u2013 including that the process of talking through the issues can be critical in raising awareness of children\u2019s rights more generally, hence why we decided to have a series of conversations. Other benefits include \u2018bringing rights home\u2019 in a way that directly responds to the lived experiences of children and young people in Northern  Ireland and contributing to the development of a children\u2019s rights culture. It would also play a key role in enhancing children\u2019s access to justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The need for children\u2019s rights to be taken more seriously has never been more important given the extent of contemporary challenges and increasing global resistance to children\u2019s rights. In Northern Ireland, children\u2019s rights failures continue to be stark. Findings from our two year RADICAL (Respect and Disrespect in Children\u2019s and Adolescent\u2019s Lives) project<\/a> show that 78% of 16-year-olds in NI say that young people are less respected due to their age, with females, same-sex attracted young people aged 16, those with a disability and those from less affluent family backgrounds reported experiencing more types of disrespect and disrespect in more contexts. Within schools, the inaccessibility of educational materials came up as an issue for those who were doing public examinations. Disabled young people commented that this made them feel excluded and disrespected. This applied to subjects such as mathematics and the sciences, which incorporated the use of visuals such as graphs. For example, a blind young person shared how she would have to skip certain questions in her GCSE examinations because the visuals were not fully accessible to her. This young person described feeling \u2018irritated, because I know that I won\u2019t get full marks then for the paper, and that I\u2019ll lose marks. And then it makes me … feel irritated because these are questions that maybe aren\u2019t fair\u2019. <\/strong>For younger children embarking on their school journeys an appropriate and timely school placement on an equal basis with other children isn\u2019t always guaranteed, with approximately 384 children with special educational needs without school placements for the next academic year at the time of writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While incorporation of the UNCRC can happen in countries where there is already a strong culture of respect for children, it can also be deemed as a necessary response to policy failures. If children\u2019s rights are already being effectively implemented, then incorporation is the icing on the cake. To set out clearly in law the rights to which children are entitled is hugely symbolic. It removes room for doubt and brings the UNCRC \u2018closer to home\u2019. As a child rights academic I have been involved in projects that have developed an evidence base on the value of incorporation across diverse geographic and cultural contexts. What is also required is listening to children and young people themselves about the value of the UNCRC for them, and their particular circumstances. Young people like Sarah (see Sarah’s blog here<\/a>) are living the consequences of children\u2019s rights failures. They have much to say, not just about those impacts, but about the solutions, and ways in which we can ensure respect for children\u2019s lives, views and their rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About the Authors<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Bronagh is a Professor of Disability and Children\u2019s Rights at Queen\u2019s University Belfast where she is also Director of the Centre for Children\u2019s Rights. Bronagh\u2019s research interests include the implementation of the UNCRC and the UNCRPD. She is also interested in the right to inclusive education for young people with disabilities. Bronagh is deaf and has a Hearing Dog called Robyn.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Prof Bronagh Byrne. Posted on 11 May 2026. Professor Bronagh Byrne responds to a post by young person, Sarah Martin (found here). In doing so, she highlights how the conversation about incorporating the UNCRC is not new in Northern Ireland. However, incorporation in Scotland, contemporary challenges, the clear benefits from incorporation, and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2456,"featured_media":244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-incorporation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/86\/2026\/05\/UNCRC-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2456"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/childrensrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}