The Children's Ombud: A Norwegian Seed Which Should Be Cultivated Widely

By the Port, Oslo, Norway

Fittingly since the word "ombudsman" has a Scandinavian etymology, Norway was the first country to establish an office for a Children's Ombud. It's an office dedicated to representing children and their rights.

Since 1981, the year Norway pioneered a Children's Ombud office, several countries, mostly in Europe, have followed but most have not yet.

If like me you have had any interface with highly vulnerable children, the idea of an office to specifically watch out and represent them is very obviously a brilliant idea: the basic rights of children, articulated comprehensively in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child remain insufficiently enforced world wide including in the USA.

There is a long list of those rights but it boils down to a few simple factors: the recognition that children have a developmental need and thus... a right to be taken care of and that this care should be ethical, non-exploitative and in the best interest of the child.

So, here is to Norway and to hoping that the fragile vision of a much better world for children spreads wider and further.

Till Later,

Anne