In spring 2020, schools across the Nordic countries closed. Football matches were cancelled. Music lessons were cancelled. Youth clubs shut their doors. Children had to stay at home for weeks, and in some countries for several months.
Someone made those decisions.
This is a child-friendly version of the report Participation is protection – Embedding children’s rights in Nordic crisis governance. In the report, we examined how children’s right to be heard was upheld in the Nordic countries during the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2023. One of the key findings was that children were often not involved when decisions that changed their lives were made. When children were asked for their views, it was often too late for their opinions to make any difference.
If we only shared these findings in a report written for adults, we would be repeating the same mistake. That is why this version is written for readers aged around ten and above, as well as for the adults around them, in schools, healthcare and social services, and in the places where decisions affecting children are made.
The book explains what the right to be heard means, what young people themselves have said, and what we, the authors of the report, believe decision-makers should do. In each country, those working to promote children’s rights have written their own chapter, in their own language, about what happened there.
The idea is that this text should be read together with children, not just about children.
The book is available in Danish, Finnish, Greenlandic, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. Further down the page, or alongside this text (depending on whether you are using a mobile phone or a computer), you can find the online versions of the book. Below, you can download the book as a PDF if you prefer that.
