UN Committee on the Rights of the Child: No Children in the Adult Justice System Ever

By Brian Evans, State Campaigns Director

On October 8, 2019, Independent Expert Manfred Nowak presented his Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty to the United Nations General Assembly, which had requested the study five years earlier. The ambitious attempt to comprehensively chronicle the various ways in which children throughout the world are deprived of their freedom and separated from their families naturally ran into problems with missing or incomplete data, but its recommendations provide a good roadmap for reforms countries like the United States should be pursuing, such as ending the prosecution of all children under age 14.