Upholding the rights of children requires that we know these rights and have the competence to implement them in day-to-day life. The University of Helsinki strives to establish a bilingual professorship for the rights of the child and strengthen the multidisciplinary research and teaching of children’s rights across multiple professional sectors.
Finland is committed to safeguarding the rights of the child in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The commitment is legally binding, but its implementation requires expertise that is not yet produced in Finland systemically enough. Upholding the rights of the child has a wide-ranging social impact, reaching from law-making to social work, early childhood education, teaching, health care and all professionals working with children and families.
The new professorship on the rights of the child at the University of Helsinki's Faculty of Law will meet this need for expertise. The professorship is the first in Finland to combine legal research on children's rights with a multidisciplinary, practical perspective. The bilingual professorship serves the needs of education in both Finnish and Swedish and provides teaching across faculty borders, as well as further education for professionals in different sectors. A network of 2–3 doctoral researchers to be built around the professorship will strengthen research on topics such as assessment methods of impacts on children, the development of legislation pertaining to children and the implementation of children's rights in everyday life and services.
The University of Helsinki aims to have a decade-long endowed professorship, after which the professorship will be made permanent in the Faculty of Law.
“The City of Helsinki joined UNICEF's Child Friendly Cities initiative back in 2021. Helsinki is a city for children and we promote a happy and safe city for them. Children's rights play an important role in achieving this goal. That is why the City is now working together with the University of Helsinki to promote the establishment of a professorship for the rights of the child,” says Mayor Daniel Sazonov.
“Strengthening the rights of the child is a key objective for Helsinki. Those who work with children play a major role in this, and their competence should be strengthened already in their basic university studies. That means that the City’s cooperation with the University of Helsinki is important and in children’s best interests,” states Deputy Mayor Johanna Laisaari.
“Finland needs bilingual, multidisciplinary research, teaching and continued education on children's rights. A professorship for the rights of the child is an investment with concrete and measurable impacts, one that we can make together,” adds Jukka Mähönen, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Helsinki.
A lunch event for the establishment of the professorship was held at Helsinki City Hall on 29 May. The lunch event brought together representatives from companies and foundations to discuss and learn about the rights of the child. The event aimed to increase understanding of the need for further research and education and launch the fundraising campaign for the professorship.