Children's rights: New UN guidance points to support for elements of veganism

Children’s Rights, The Environment, Climate Disaster and Veganism: A Comment on new United Nations’ Authoritative Guidance

Alexandra Cantarelli

August 2023 featured a remarkable moment for children’s international rights, specifically concerning their right to enjoy a healthy and sustainable environment. For the first time, the United Nations Committee (UN Committee, the Committee) on the Rights of the Child (CRC) promoted a children’s rights approach to environmental protection, with a special focus on climate change in “General Comment No. 26”.¹

The UN Committee explicitly established, that children, as rights holders, should be protected from infringements of their fundamental rights that arise from environmental harm, and that children should be respected as environmental actors² and agents of change.³

In the guidance, the Committee recognises that the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is necessary for the full enjoyment of a broad range of children’s rights. The Committee also reiterates that the right to education includes the right to an environmental education, and that children should learn about sustainable lifestyle choices.

This initiative will encourage governments to create new or strengthen existing public policies to give effect to children’s core rights against the harms caused by environmental degradation.

However, while the new guidance on children’s rights provides a focus on the most relevant fundamental rights provided under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and which are intertwined with the right to a healthy environment, including the right to life, to health, and to non-discrimination, The Vegan Society observed that the UN Committee did not emphasise the importance of a child’s Article 14 right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion to its mission.⁴

The human right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is explained by the Human Rights Committee⁵ as ‘far-reaching and profound’, encompassing ‘freedom of thought on all matters, personal conviction and the commitment to religion or belief’. As such, this right is broadly constructed and includes, for example, beliefs with dietary norms as a manifestation and expression of moral convictions. This is where The Vegan Society has highlighted veganism and the beliefs of vegan children as relevant to the current mission of the United Nations Committee on the rights of the child in relation to the environment and the climate catastrophe.

The global contribution of animal farming to GHG emissions is agreed to be 14.5%, which is more than the total of direct emissions from all transport combined.⁶ Livestock farms are also responsible for deforestation in the Amazon rainforest which significantly reduces its capacity to function as a carbon sink. Studies show that if the vast areas destined for ‘cattle’ were used to grow grains and vegetables, it could help solve key food security issues⁷. When it comes to environmental protection and climate change, the adoption of a vegan diet is even promoted and encouraged by the United Nations itself: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in one of its latest reports,⁸ recognises that plant-based diets offer a significant opportunity for States to mitigate and adapt to climate change, with the potential to reduce over 70% of GHG emissions.

Veganism attracts protection under the human right to freedom of conscience in the European system of Human Rights,⁹ and is also protected under the United Kingdom equality law,¹⁰ along with qualifying philosophical beliefs around human-induced climate change.¹¹ Protection for these beliefs aligns with the legal meaning of the human right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion explained by the Human Rights Committee and explicit protection for vegan children is, therefore, relevant to the goals pursued by the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The United Nations recognises that children identify environmental issues as highly relevant to their lives, and pursuant to Articles 12, 13, and 15 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, they have a right to be heard, freedom of expression, and peaceful assembly. In recognition of children as “agents of change and defenders of human rights”,¹² the UN Committee’s authoritative guidance could have been strengthened by also including the importance of the prohibition on discrimination against vegan children under Article 14 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the obligation to ensure that the right to freedom of speech is accessible to them, especially considering that, to date, few approaches on this matter have been adopted by the international community, leaving vegan children without effective measures and authoritative guidance to ensure they are able to practice their convictions and dietary choices. This is particularly important because the United Nations has already emphasised that the right to non-discrimination “also requires appropriate proactive measures taken by the State to ensure effective equal opportunities for all children to enjoy the rights under the Convention.”¹³

In addition, General Comment No. 26 does not explicitly reference the relevance of the prohibition on discrimination and the right to freedom of conscience under Articles 2 and 14 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child to the right to education under Articles 28 and 29 CRC. On the right to education, paragraph 52 of the new guidance explains that Article 29(1)(e) CRC - which requires that the education of a child should be directed towards the development of respect for their natural environment - shall be read in conjunction with Article 28 of the Convention¹⁴ to ensure that every child has the right to an education that reflects environmental values. The importance of Articles 2 and 14 CRC for the right to education was already recognised by the UN in previous documents.¹⁵ General Comment No. 14 (2013),¹⁶ for instance, establishes that a child’s identity includes their ‘beliefs’, which is important in the context of the well-established scope of the human right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion under Article 14 CRC. A child’s protected ethical beliefs intertwine Articles 2, 14, 28 and 29 CRC, and have functional value in relation to the child’s right to be free from witnessing violence against non-human animals and human interaction with and responsibility for the natural environment.¹⁷

The important relationship between respect for the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion and the right to education is explained by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).¹⁸ The first part of Article 2 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR guarantees the right to education, while the second part guarantees the right of parents to have their children educated according to their religious and philosophical convictions, which may include a vegan education and sustainable lifestyles involving plant-based diets. This right is also given effect in the UK under the Human Rights Act of 1998, which provides vegans and vegan parents with the right to claim protection when their convictions and dietary requirements are not accommodated.

Thus, in paragraph 52 of the new authoritative UN guidance, which requires that the education of a child be directed to the development of respect for the natural environment, an explicit reference to human rights protection for veganism under Article 14 CRC could be made, along with reference to the rights of parents under the right to education, and the Article 2 CRC principle of non-discrimination. This would emphasise their relevance to a children’s rights approach to the environment and climate disaster. Referencing the relationship between Articles 29(1)(b) and (c) and 29(1)(e), in paragraph 52 on the right to education, would illustrate the “interconnected nature of the Convention’s provisions”¹⁹ and further emphasise the relevance of additional fundamental rights of the child and the rights of parents to respect for the moral and cultural values of their children in their education. It is worth mentioning that failure to comply with the principles in Article 29(1) CRC could ‘offend human dignity’ undermine, or even ‘destroy’, the capacity of the child to benefit from educational opportunities.²⁰

An explicit reference to human rights duties towards vegan children under Article 14 CRC is, therefore, relevant to a children’s rights approach to environmental education that “should be [among others] empowering”.²¹ As such, paragraph 52 on the meaning of a child’s right to education in the context of a child rights approach to the environment and climate disaster, can be strengthened by emphasising that environmental education should respect and accommodate the beliefs and subsequent needs of vegan children under Article 14 CRC.

This intersecting approach to the rights of children would ensure that governments are directed to work with educational institutions to provide healthy vegan-inclusive teaching and learning resources, as well as vegan food, as an useful measure under the requirement teaching children about sustainable and responsible lifestyles.

The UN Committee’s authoritative guidance is of incredible relevance to strengthening the international community’s efforts to establish climate change policies considering the specific needs of children. However, as The Vegan Society submitted during the consultation stages,²² the document could be even stronger if it also approached the interests of vegan children by reiterating the legal obligation under Article 14 CRC to support them as relevant agents of change, by recognising that their demands for urgent measures to tackle global environmental harm must be met, and by reinforcing their status as legitimate and important human rights defenders.

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