Children's voices in child protective proceedings - overview of 195 countries

Do you want to know whether children have the right to express their opinions in court proceedings in Azerbaijan or Kiribati? You can find it at a database of the Yale Law School, together with all the other countries you can think of. It is part of a survey, Representing Children Worldwide, conducted at the Yale Law School researching the legal provisions of 194 countries concerning how children's voices are heard in child protective proceedings in 2005.

The website has concise information about the law that relates to children's opinions in child protective proceedings in 195 countries together with relevant references. In many cases the information is provided in the original language with (sometimes unofficial) English translation.

The site also provides:

Country Category Chart

Which categorizes the countries by both mandatory and discretionary legal models.

Country by Country Chart

Which provides a brief description of each country's child protective proceedings, explaining the way that children convey their opinions, where applicable.

From the website:
"Representing Children Worldwide is a research project which compiles information and resources on how children's voices are heard in child protective proceedings around the country and around the world in the year 2005. The website provides a summary of the practices of the 194 signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child (UNCRC) with respect to this question, as well as background information on the jurisdiction's child protective practices and web resources and contact information for further research in this field.

Our research focuses particularly on how different countries' practices relate to Article 12 of the CRC, which guarantees children's right to express views freely in all matters concerning them, and particularly to be heard in all judicial and administrative proceedings that concern them. "