REPORT: SDG 14 and Children’s Human Rights

By Elisa Morgera, Michael Sweeney & Sophie Shields

“The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that the effective realisation of children’s rights is the basis for the achievement of a sustainable future and the attainment of all human rights.[1] This requires that the Sustainable Development Goals should be fulfilled in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.[2] In 2016, UNICEF published their report ‘Mapping the Global Goals for Sustainable Development and the Convention on the Rights of the Child’, in which it mapped the connections between Sustainable Development Goal 14 on life below water and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.[3]

This paper will take UNICEF’s report as a starting point for explaining the inter-dependences of children’s human rights and a healthy ocean and complement it with a comprehensive reflection on the inter-dependence of the human rights of the child and a healthy ocean. The paper is structured around the targets of Sustainable Development Goal 14….”


[1]Protection of the rights of the child in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, 15 December 2016, UN Doc A/HRC/34/27, para 6.

[2] Ibid, para 19.

[3] UNICEF, ‘Mapping the Global Goals for Sustainable Development and the Convention on the Rights of the Child ’(2016) at 2.