Child rights mainstreaming promotes an inclusive and meaningful participation of children in decisions that affects their lives, in keeping with their evolving capacities and levels of maturity.

Participation is a fundamental right and guiding principle of the CRC (Article 12). The CRC views children as right holders and claim makers, and as active participants in their own development. Ideally, provisions should be made to include the participation of children in all decisions that affect them, as they are the only real “experts” on their daily lives and local conditions. They should be treated as partners in the development process rather than as beneficiaries in need of assistance.

Participation can take many forms and differing levels of children’s involvement - from simple consultation on needs and problems, to influence over designs and plans, to active involvement with adults in governance structures, all the way to children conceiving of and driving their own development initiatives. To be most effective, meaningful children’s participation requires widespread changes in political and institutional structures, as well as in attitudes, values and cultural practices, so that children are recognised as citizens and stakeholders. Participation also gives children and young people the chance to develop skills that will benefit them throughout their lives - such as problem-solving, communication, leadership, teamwork and negotiation.

The depth and nature of participation would obviously be different for an eight-year old and that of a child of sixteen! Intricately linked to the right to participation is the notion of evolving capacities – that children’s capacity to participate in decision-making evolves over time and is dependent on their age, maturity and developmental stage.

In any participatory process with children, adults are necessarily involved, given children’s dependent status in society. The receptivity and capacity of adults to listen to children and to make space for children’s opinions are crucial to meaningful child participation. Capacity building for adults to support children’s participation is as important as capacity building for children to voice and make their claims.