Child Rights Connect: Child Human Rights Defenders
In a world facing multiple enmeshed crisis, children have emerged as some of the most powerful and effective agents of social change. Perhaps that should come as no surprise, as children are the ones who have most at stake when it comes to the future wellbeing of the human race.
Children human rights defenders, as they are sometimes called, face unique challenges when they set out to fight for a better world, however. People in positions of power and influence often don’t think they need to listen to children’s voices, and sometimes child campaigners are bullied and abused for standing up for their rights.
Child Rights Connect, which is the world’ leading organization specialised in protecting and advancing the human rights of children, is working to change all that. When they launched a new guide on the specific rights of child human rights defenders, they called me up to help them create an animation explaining the challenges these young change-makers are confronted with.
In order to make the motion graphic appealing to both child human rights defenders themselves and adults who want to learn about the particular human rights issues involved, we used a combination of warm colours and gritty, artisanal textures in a video that follows the journey of a young female activist.
The piece needed to look friendly and welcoming, but also needed to avoid being too ‘cartoony’.
Along with the main English animation, versions were also created in Spanish and French so as to spread the message far and wide. In keeping with the principles of children’s human rights, child human rights defenders from around the world were consulted on both the content and approach to the animation, and the narrations feature the voices of child human rights defenders from Africa and Latin America.
The folks at Child Rights Connect were an absolute delight to work with and the importance of the work they do to support children’s rights around the world cannot be understated. I really hope their efforts, and those of the children human rights defenders they support, keep going from strength to strength.