Safe mobility is a right for all young people

November 20, the anniversary of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, is a great opportunity to recognise a new children’s right: the right to safe mobility. 

While “the right to have rights” had been denied to children for centuries, the United Nations provided a legal response in 1989 not only by setting out in a Convention the rights of the child but by making it compulsory for signatory States to respect them. 

The rights of the child today cover, through 41 articles, all aspects contributing to their full and harmonious development. The right to safe mobility is not explicitly part of this legal arsenal but must be implicitly linked to a certain number of them.

Road accidents are the leading cause of death among young people. It is a direct threat to their physical integrity and their personal development. When it occurs in the school’s surroundings, it is also a direct attack on their right to education. The mobility of young people on their way to school therefore constitutes a right according to Articles 6, 24, 28 and 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The VIA programme gives young people a voice to provide solutions rooted in their daily lives to improve the safety of their journeys to school. It thus meets the provisions of Articles 12 and 13 of the Convention relating to freedom of expression for young people.

The programme highlights the extraordinary capacity for observation of young people, once they are put in a position to make their voice heard. Children have a different view of the world than adults and therefore perceive the safety of their travels differently. They may be frightened in situations that adults consider safe. Safety walks - inspired by the Canadian concept of safety audit used to increase the safety of women in urban sites - allow them to map the risks around their school.

This risk mapping carried out by the children - and not by urban planning experts - is at the origin of the recommendations that they will make to improve the safety of their travels around their school. These recommendations must be reasoned, concrete, viable and differentiate between those which are the responsibility of young people themselves and those which depend on a decision by public authorities.

The program leads to concrete awareness-raising actions carried out by young people for young people. Debates in classes, creation of new prevention tools, volunteering actions, “lobbying” actions with public authorities... are some of the actions initiated by young people with the support of the entire educational community .

The VIA programme implements what forms the basis of youth participation for sustainable development. The highest level of youth participation defined by Roger Hart of the City University of New York for UNICEF Innocenti is “decisions made by young people, shared with adults”. The VIA programme aims to strengthen young people's capacity to act, while allowing them to access and learn from adults' skills and experiences.

The partner schools and NGOs of this programme make it possible to include safe mobility education within the broader framework of children's rights and education for global citizenship.