Optional Protocol 3 of the UNCRC: Albania and Spain ratified!

Date: 13th June 2013
Category: UK 1st periodic review, General measures of implementation

Albania and Spain both ratified Optional Protocol 3 of the UNCRC, on 29th May and 3rd June 2013 respectively. With these two new ratifications, the optional protocol now counts six States Parties!

On 19th December 2011, the United Nations provided children with the possibility to access justice at the international level, thanks to a new international treaty, the new Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (OPCRC) on a Communications Procedure (also called OP3 CRC).

The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a Communications Procedure (hereafter referred to as OP3 CRC) is an international human rights treaty that allows children, groups of children or their representatives, who claim that their rights have been violated by their State to bring a communication, or complaint, before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

It allows children to approach the UN if their rights are not being protected in their country and they have exhausted all domestic remedies to seek justice.

It also allows any interested party to provide information about grave or systematic violations of chid rights to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (through the inquiry procedure).

But children will only be able to use this new procedure if their States ratify the OP3 CRC, and only after the OP3 CRC has become international law, or 'entered into force', i.e. after 10 States have ratified the OP3 CRC.

Only four more ratifications are now needed to reach the 10 ratifications necessary to the entry into force of OP3 CRC!

• Find out more here.