Professor Emeritus Jane Williams has built a distinguished career spanning legal practice, government legal service, academia, and civil society activism. She played a pivotal role in securing legislation on the rights of the child in Wales and was instrumental in the campaign for a Welsh Youth Parliament. At Swansea University, she co-founded the Observatory on Human Rights of Children (now the Observatory on Human Rights and Social Justice) and the Children’s Legal Centre Wales. Her scholarship and advocacy focus on devolution, child law, and children’s rights, and she has pioneered pedagogical innovations, including trans-Atlantic Street Law collaborations and human rights–based research with children.
Observatory on Human Rights and Social Justice
In Episode 73 of Human Rights Education Now!, Jane Williams reflects on the roots of her commitment to children’s rights, shaped by witnessing the impact of poverty on children’s lives and by her legal training. She discusses the challenges of advancing children’s rights within the legal profession and the transformative influence of the UK Human Rights Act.
A central focus of the conversation is the development of Wales’ Children’s Parliament and the Children’s and People’s Assembly of Wales, created in the context of devolution and informed by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Jane explains how these initiatives demonstrate the practical integration of children’s participation rights into democratic structures. She also describes the founding of the Observatory on Human Rights and Social Justice and the Children’s Legal Centre Wales, institutions dedicated to research, accountability, policy advocacy, curriculum reform, and embedding children’s rights into formal systems.
The discussion addresses ongoing challenges, including limited implementation of human rights education through” rights-based practice in classrooms, the impact of nationalism on attitudes toward migrant children, and the UK’s incomplete engagement with its colonial history. Drawing inspiration from historical figures such as Eglantyne Jebb and Janusz Korczak, Jane concludes by advocating a bold recommendation: abolishing the minimum voting age so that governments must listen to children as political actors.
Topics discussed:
- Origins of Jane Williams’ work in children’s rights
- Impact of poverty on children’s lives
- Law as a pathway to children’s rights advocacy
- Wales’ devolution and the creation of the Children’s Parliament
- The role of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Welsh reform
- Integrating children’s rights into institutions and legal practice
- Curriculum reform in Wales and human rights education
- Nationalism, migrant children, and decolonizing legal education
- Historical role models in children’s rights
- Abolishing the minimum voting age as a strategy for advancing children’s rights
Full topic listing available for PDF download HERE.
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