Enhancing legal assistance for children in Europe
For many children in Europe, criminal justice remains unfair. CLEAR-Rights aimed to ensure that high-quality, free, and specialized legal aid is accessible to every child accused or suspected of a crime.
“The ideal lawyer to me is someone who explains me everything with patience, until I do understand what I need to know.” – Child Advisory Board member from Hungary
CLEAR-Rights supports practitioners from legal aid and pro bono systems, child justice stakeholders, and children in conflict with the law.
Our impact
Strengthening capacities of legal practitioners
We strengthened the capacities of legal practitioners in child-friendly legal assistance and promoted greater collaboration among child justice professionals. Over the course of the project, 182 lawyers were trained in child-friendly legal assistance across Belgium, France, Hungary, and Romania. All training materials are freely available to anyone interested in improving their knowledge in this field.
Another key resource developed through the project is the CHILD-Lex Database. This database is designed to provide professionals working with children – such as lawyers, prosecutors, social workers, judges, and probation officers – with detailed information about the rights of children in contact with the justice system. It includes legal factsheets outlining these rights under international, European, and national legislation, as well as relevant case law.
Connecting children with lawyers
A clear gap has been identified in the social and legal fields: on one hand, children in conflict with the law often lack access to the legal assistance they need and are unaware of their rights; on the other hand, state-financed pro bono lawyers are willing to help but may lack the tools or guidance to do so effectively. CLEAR-Rights bridged this gap by connecting needs with available resources, benefiting teenagers in disadvantaged communities.
Child Advisory Boards
Child Advisory Boards (CABs) were established in France, Hungary, and Romania to empower children to advocate for their rights and make their voices heard on what truly constitutes child-friendly justice and legal assistance. Each CAB was composed of around ten children and young people. During the project period, they actively participated in designing and developing project activities and outputs.
Thanks to the CABs, we have invaluable insights on what children’s needs and priorities really are, instead of what we assume them to be. "I was impressed to see how children have much more sensitivity, they offered concrete examples to make environments more child-friendly. We adults didn't think of things like lights and smells, but they did. They are a unique asset for this project." – Giulia Patane, Program Director: Europe, PILnet
What makes a good lawyer?
With the help of two facilitators, CAB members in Hungary created a short video in which they shared their thoughts on what the ideal lawyer would be like and what they expect the environment to be when meeting with lawyers.
"My Legal Support" application
One of the key activities of the project is the "My Legal Support" application, co-designed with children from the project’s Child Advisory Boards, in close collaboration with Mind of My Own. It is intended for use by children both with and without experience in receiving free legal assistance. This tool enables children to express their views, wishes and feelings in an instant and convenient way. It also helps service provides – whether state-funded legal aid or pro bono service – improve the quality of their work.
All the project publications and news are available here.
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The project was implemented between 2021 and 2023 by Terre des hommes Hungary, in partnership with the Alliance of Lawyers for Human Rights (France), Defence for Children Belgium, Defence for Children the Netherlands, PILnet, and Terre des hommes Romania. It was co-funded by the European Union’s Justice Programme (2014–2020).
