Overview of the Act
Part 1 and the Schedule: the Uncrc Requirements
Section 4: Interpretation of the UNCRC requirements
17.Section 4 sets out sources of information a court or tribunal may wish to take into account when considering how the UNCRC requirements should be understood, so far as that is relevant to the interpretation of the UNCRC requirements in a given case.
18.As explained in paragraph 7, the schedule sets out the UNCRC requirements as derived from text of parts of the treaties. This means that the schedule does not include the full text of those treaties or their preambles. As a matter of public international law, the text of any part of a treaty has to be interpreted against the backdrop of the treaty’s full text and preamble. Some treaty text, or preamble text, not included in the schedule may have a bearing on the interpretation of text that is included in the schedule. Section 4 allows a court or tribunal that is determining a question about the UNCRC requirements to take into account any text of the treaty that is not currently set out in the schedule, as well as the treaty’s preamble, so far as it is relevant to the interpretation of the UNCRC requirements in a case.
19.Guidance about the meaning of the treaties from which the UNCRC requirements are derived may also be found in the work of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, a body established to monitor implementation of children’s rights under article 43 of the Convention. There are various procedural routes which can lead to the UN committee expressing formal views about the requirements of the treaties. One of the interpretative aids that section 4 allows domestic courts applying the UNCRC requirements to take into account, so far as relevant to the interpretation of the UNCRC requirements in a case, are the views formally expressed by the UN committee. Another is other international law, and comparative law (which is the socio-legal study of differences between legal systems).
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