Dieter Burssens

Restorative Group Conferencing at School

Abstract Serious incidents at school have profound consequences for many peoplethe direct or indirect victims-and often cause major tensions within the school. The school board has few or no means at its disposal for giving a constructive response. The positive results of restorative group conferencing in a judicial framework created the expectation that restorative measures might produce favourable results in education as well. Between 2002 and 2004, an experiment in restorative group conferencing at school was monitored scientifically in Flanders. On the basis of the observation of the sessions, interviews with the offenders, the victims, the supporters and the facilitators, and group discussions, it may be concluded that restorative group conferencing at school works. However, a number of aspects need to be investigated further.

Youth, crime and human rights

Within the United Nations system for the promotion and protection of human rights, the Committee on the Rights of the Child is especially responsible for the design and the follow up of human rights for children, children’s and youth rights, and for the social response to youth crime. This Committee is charged with the implementation and the observation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which was adopted unanimously in 1989 by the United Nations General Assembly. It took 10 years of difficult debates to create the CRC as a separate tool to address the peculiarities in children with regard to human rights. But once accepted, the CRC enjoyed a huge international support. Currently, in fact, only the USA and Somalia are the two only countries that have not yet ratified the Convention. In this chapter, we will discuss some basic provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child as they relate to delinquency committed by young people, who are to be understood as persons under the age of 18, and to juvenile justice in general. At the same time, we will also formulate some critical comments in relation to these provisions and to children’s rights in general.