Children's rights
UNICEF resources
Rights for Every Child
This free downloadable booklet, Rights for Every Child, includes useful prompts for discussion around children’s rights. It includes photographs and illustrations by authors and illustrators such as Shirley Hughes and Ken Wilson-Max.
First Steps To Rights
The First Steps to Rights resource was developed to make the concept of children’s rights relevant to young children. It includes lots of creative and practical activities which centre around a feely bag which is made up by the children. The bag includes images or props to represent rights to water, food or shelter. The other activities and the resource list encourage you to build on this activity to explore rights. The book comes with an excellent set of 15 laminated posters with images of children from around the world with links to specific rights of the UN Convention.
First Steps to Rights can be bought from the UNICEF website, but you can also download a sample activity from the pack, Walk for Water, which looks at how some children do not have access to clean water.
Children's rights and responsibilities
This leaflet, Children's rights and responsibilities, summarises in pictures and accessible language 42 articles of the UNCRC. It can also be downloaded in a poster format.
Books on children's rights
Children's Rights and Early Education
'Children’s Rights and Early Education' by Cathy Nutbrown is a book for practitioners examining the articles of the UN Convention and applying them to work with young children in a variety of settings.
ABC: Human Rights - Practical activities for primary and secondary schools
'ABC: Human Rights - Practical activities for primary and secondary schools' is a United Nations publication which is free to download from the United Nations Human Rights website (follow the link and it is No. 4 in the first section, human rights education). It contains learning activities and games that can be used to foster human rights awareness amongst children. Each activity is followed by a useful link to articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Chapter Two ('Human Rights Topics for Pre-school and Lower Primary School') offers suggestions for nurturing younger children’s sense of their own worth and that of others to develop awareness of the human rights principles of human dignity and equality.
Learning for Life pack
Learning for Life is a programme which includes fun, interactive materials to supplement classroom teaching. The resource is aimed at children aged 5-8. Various themes are developed in the activities with an emphasis on rights, rules and responsibilities.
Finding other resources
Organisations that are working to promote children’s rights are producing animations, books, posters, leaflets and many other resources to help you to promote these rights with the children you work with. Many of the cartoons commissioned by UNICEF do not rely on dialogue or text – themes such as discrimination and drugs are explored in a visual and immediate way. These could be useful for staff development or work with families. They are promoted on various organisations' websites, but can also be found on online video sharing sites such as YouTube - here's one example looking at the UNCRC.