About Us

Principal Investigator, GlobalChild

Dr. Ziba Vaghri is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at the University of New Brunswick. In 2014, she received a 5-year Scholar Award from the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (MSFHR) in recognition of her decade of pioneering work on linking child development and child rights. She was trained and mentored by one of the most prolific researchers of early child development (ECD), the late Professor Clyde Hertzman (OC).

From 2008 – 2014, as the co-founder and Director of the International Program at the Human Early Learning Partnership at the University of British Columbia, she took the lead role in the design, implementation and evaluation of a number of major international projects related to children’s health, development and rights. For over 10 years, she has partnered with the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Rights of the Child (Committee). During this period, as the Secretariat and the lead member of an international team of experts, Dr. Vaghri led the process of developing the Indicators of General Comment 7 (GC7) – implementing child rights in early childhood. Working under the auspices of UN CRC and the GC7 international team, she spearheaded the pilot projects of these indicators in Tanzania, Chile, and the province of British Columbia, Canada. Following the first pilot, Dr. Vaghri developed the concept to digitize the indicators, which led to the creation of the Early Childhood Rights Indicators (ECRI) – an electronic tool to monitor the rights of children ages 0 – 8 years old. She also authored reports to the governments of Chile and Tanzania and their respective United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) offices.

Dr. Vaghri has many years of experience working with government officials and international organizations including the World Health Organization (WHO); UNICEF; United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and the UN Committee. Building on this experience, in 2015, she assembled an impressive team of experts from many Canadian and international universities, as well as a number of prominent Canadian and international child rights promoting institutions. These team members have pooled their expertise to develop GlobalChild: a universal and comprehensive child rights monitoring platform.

Dr. Vaghri is the Principal Investigator and Director of GlobalChild, a project and program of research funded by Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). She is also the lead investigator for other large international projects, among them the Global Child Rights Dialogue (GCRD), and the Child Rights Educational Tools (CRET).

Former Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2007-2011)

Dr. Yanghee Lee, a professor in the Department of Child Psychology and Education at Sungkyunkwan University, is currently serving as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar. She has been a member of the UN CRC (2003-2013), serving as its chair from 2007-2011, and as chairperson of the Meeting of Chairpersons of Treaty Bodies (2010-2011). Dr. Lee has been the guiding force in the draft, negotiation and adoption of the third Optional Protocol to the CRC on a Communications Procedure.

She is the recipient of many awards, including 2007 Year of the Woman Award (Korea); the 2009 Order of Civil Merit (Suk Ryu Medal), the highest recognition given to a civilian in South Korea, in recognition for her work in protecting and promoting the rights of children worldwide; the 2011 Hyo Ryung Award for her dedication to children and their well-being; and the 2015 Youngsan Diplomat Award for her dedication to human rights. Dr. Lee is an elected member of the Executive Council of the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect; executive board member of UNICEF National Committee of Korea, and founder and president of the International Center for Child Rights and the Korean Association for Children with Disabilities.

Vice-Chairperson; Principal Investigator of GlobalChild

Please see Dr. Vaghri’s bio, above.

Vice-President, UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

Justice Winter is Vice-President of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, and served as the Committee’s Chairperson from 2017-2019. She has longstanding experience on EU projects on judicial reform and in justice institutions in numerous countries. She works with international organisations, the Council of Europe, the European Union, and UN bodies, and provides advice to governments, in particular concerning juvenile justice and child protection, women’s issues, child soldiers and organized crime.

She began her judicial career in 1981 in Vienna where she was a judge, and was later appointed by the Secretary General of the United Nations as an international judge in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. She was also elected President of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and President of the International Association of Youth and Family Court Judges and Magistrates.

Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Florida, President elect of the International Society for Social Pediatrics and Child Health

Dr. Goldhagen’s domestic experience is in urban, community, and maternal and child health; medical education; the core functions of public health; health care administration; and in children’s rights and child advocacy. He founded the Residency Programs in Pediatrics and International Child Health and Pediatrics and Urban Child Health at Case Western Reserve University. In 2011, he received the American Academy of Pediatrics Job Lewis Smith Award and was also named the Community Hospice of Northeast Florida/Neviaser Family Professor in Pediatric Palliative Care at UF Jacksonville. He served for 13 years as the Director of Public Health for Duval County, Florida, and in 2018, he was elected president of the International Society for Social Pediatrics and Child Health.

His international experience includes refugee work in Southeast Asia; medical education and community health at the Gondar College of Medical Sciences, Ethiopia; work in orphanages in Romania; and development of systems of care for children with complex medical conditions in Hong Kong. In collaboration with the International Society for Social Pediatrics, and pediatric societies in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Colombia, Dr. Goldhagen is currently working to implement international training programs in children’s rights and health equity for child health professionals.

UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

Dr. Hynd Ayoubi Idrissi is a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2015-2023) and holds a PhD in Human Rights from the University of Grenoble in France (1998). She is a professor of Law in the Faculty of Law, Economics and Social Sciences at Rabat-Souissi Mohammed V University and has served as Vice Dean in charge of Scientific Research and Cooperation (2005-2009) and (2016-2018).

Dr. Ayoubi Idrissi has served on the Superior Council of the Judicial Power (2017-2021) and also coordinates the Master’s programme on human rights at the university of Mohammed V de Rabat in Morocco. Dr Ayoubi Idrissi has prepared and presented Morocco’s reports to several UN human rights bodies including the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, CEDAW, the Committee against Torture, the Committee against Racial Discrimination, and the Committee on the Rights of the Child. Dr. Ayoubi Idrissi is a founding member of the UNESCO Chair on “Women and their rights” at Ibn Tofail University in Kénitra and Mohammed V University.

Honorary member

The Honorable Landon Pearson O.C. is an honorary member of the GlobalChild Steering Committee. She has been an advocate for the rights and well-being of children for over two decades, serving in the Senate of Canada from 1994 to 2005, where she became known as the Children’s Senator. During her time as Senator, she was named Advisor on Children’s Rights to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Personal Representative of the Prime Minister to the 2002 United Nations Special Session on Children. Since her retirement from the Senate in 2005, Landon Pearson created the Landon Pearson Resource Centre at Carleton University to promote the rights of children and youth. The Resource Centre is a hub for students and scholars working in child rights across Canada and continues to promote the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Principal Investigator of GlobalChild, Saint John, Canada

Please see Dr. Vaghri’s bio, above.

International Child Rights Consultant, Ankara, Turkey

Mr. Adem Arkadas-Thibert is an international child rights consultant and advocate. Currently he works as a key expert on human rights monitoring and advocacy for a direct support programme of the European Union for Civil Society. He was head of the Human Rights Programme at the International Children’s Center (ICC) in Turkey. He has worked with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the United Nations’ Refugee Agency in Turkey, the Association for Solidarity with Asylum Seekers and Migrants, and the Children’s Legal Centre in the UK. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Child Rights Network (CRIN) and a member of the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, the International Society for Child Indicators. Mr. Arkadas-Thibert has written reports and published articles on child rights, human rights and refugee issues. His main areas of interest are monitoring the implementation of human rights normative frameworks including the UN CRC and human rights impact assessments. He has over 23 years of experience in programme and project development and management, in developing policy advocacy guides, training materials, as well as running trainings and projects in human rights and children’s rights. Mr. Arkadas-Thibert studied international relations, political science and public administration at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Middle East Technical University (METU). He also completed a Masters in Theory and Practice of Human Rights at the University of Essex and a Masters in Science (Economic and Social Demography) at Hacettepe University, Turkey.

International Child Rights Consultant, London, United Kingdom

Gerison Lansdown was the founding director (1992-2000), of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, and, over the past 20 years, has worked as an international children’s rights consultant and advocate, publishing and lecturing widely on the subject of children’s rights, including on children’s participation and evolving capacities. She has worked with the Committee on the Rights of the Child in the development of several General Comments, including on Articles 12 and 31, the rights of children during adolescence and currently on the rights of children in the digital environment. She was actively involved in the development of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and in the drafting of the General Comment on inclusive education. She has Honorary Doctorates from the Open University UK, Carleton University, Canada and the University of East London, and an Honorary Fellowship from the University of Central Lancashire. She was Vice Chair of UNICEF-UK for nine years, and is currently on the editorial advisory board of the Canadian Journal of Children’s Rights, Chair of the ODI GAGE programme, Chair of Child to Child and on the OSF Early Years Advisory Board.

International Child Rights Consultant, Sion, Switzerland

Dr. Roberta Ruggiero is a senior research and teaching associate at the University of Geneva’s Centre for Children’s Rights Studies (CCRS). She is also the Academic Coordinator of the Children’s Rights European Academic Network (CREAN). She holds a MA in law, an MA in human rights and democratization from the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratization (EIUC), and a PhD in children’s rights promotion and protection awarded by the University of Molise. Formerly, she was the scientific coordinator of the European Network of National Observatories on Childhood (ChildONEurope) based at the Instituto degli Innocenti (2008-2013). She was also a senior lecturer at the University of Padua, and an external professor of children’s rights at the University of Molise, as well as a researcher at the International Organization on Migration (Europe Office) and at the UNICEF-Innocenti Research Office.

Her publications and research interests include: independent human rights institutions for children, children’s rights implementation, comparative childhood governmental policies, the status of parenthood in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and children’s rights approaches to evidence based policy. She is a member of the Committee of Experts and a scientific advisor to the Cantonal Observatory of Youth of Canton Valais, Switzerland and to the Working Group on National Child Maltreatment Data Collection at the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN).

Office of the New Brunswick Child and Youth Advocate, Fredericton, Canada

Mr. Christian Whalen is the Deputy Advocate and Senior Legal Counsel at the New Brunswick Office of the Child and Youth Advocate. He is a native of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, and holds degrees from Carleton University (BA ’87); the University of New Brunswick (LLB ’89) and from l’Université de Strasbourg III (D.E.A. ’92), as a French Government Scholar and Council of Europe Human Rights Fellow. Following his call to the bar, Mr. Whalen worked as a lawyer in private practice and as legal counsel to the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission before joining the Office of the Ombudsman in 2005. He has been responsible for systemic investigations and acted as lead investigator on several reports of Ombudsman and the Child and Youth Advocate. He has served as Acting Child and Youth Advocate for the Province of New Brunswick (2011-2013). He was the founding Chairperson of the first Children’ Law section within the Canadian Bar Association and is Founder and Director of the International Summer Course on the Rights of the Child at the Université de Moncton since 2011. In 2014 he received the Children’s Rights Champion Award from the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children and in 2015 was awarded the John Tait Award for distinguished service as public sector counsel by the Canadian Bar Association.

European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA)

Ioannis Dimitrakopoulos is the Scientific Adviser of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). His areas of expertise include equality and non-discrimination, Roma and minorities, hate crime, social inclusion, social rights, and child rights. He is a social scientist with a particular interest in indicator development. Since 1983 he worked in academic institutions, where he lectured and conducted quantitative and qualitative social research. In parallel, during the 1990s he worked in local and regional government. Later he also coordinated national and transnational research projects at European Union level. He started working at FRA in 2003 and has been responsible for several of the Agency’s major publications.

SOS Children’s Village International

Alan is the Representative to the United Nations in Geneva for SOS Children’s Villages International. Over the last ten years, as both co-convenor and active member of the Child Rights Connect Working Group on Children Without Parental Care, he has advocated for the recognition and welcoming of the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children (the Guidelines) and continues to advocate for their implementation. In that regard he has also worked closely with many partners on various steering groups to develop: the Moving Forward handbook; the “Getting Care Right for All Children” MOOC; on the MOMENTUM Conference in 2016; and the Tracking Progress tool to monitor implementation of the Guidelines. Alan has also served for over seven years on the Executive Committee of Child Rights Connect, an international child rights network that serves to support effective civil-society engagement with the monitoring work of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.  Previously, whilst with the Bernard van Leer Foundation, Alan also played a key role in the development of an indicators framework for CRC General Comment 7 on implementing rights in early childhood. Alan is also a former child care practitioner and holds degrees in Psychology (BSc: Stirling University) and Human Rights (MA: Essex University).

Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Free University of Berlin

Dr. Lothar Krappmann was a member of the UN CRC from 2003-2011. He studied Sociology, Philosophy, and Modern History at universities in Frankfurt and Cologne, and completed his doctorate in Sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Until his retirement, he was a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Human Development in Berlin. His main field of research is the social, emotional, and moral development of children in family, school, kindergarten and day care institutions, with special interests in vulnerable groups of children, particularly children growing up in poverty. He remains involved in a number of activities and programmes promoting citizenship education and children’s participation in kindergarten and school, and served on advisory boards to research institutions, social welfare organizations, and governmental agencies.

Department of Public and International Law, University of Oslo

Kirsten Sandberg is Professor of Law at the University of Oslo. She was a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child 2011-2019, serving as the Committee’s chairperson 2013-2015. Her research focus is on child law and children’s rights, including the right of the child to be heard, the best interests of the child, child protection, gender identity, and climate change. She teaches child law, public administration law and social welfare law. Professor Sandberg has published and presented widely on children’s rights around the world, including lectures at the University of Zimbabwe and Yunnan University, China. She has served as acting Justice in the Supreme Court of Norway and has worked in the Legal Department of the Norwegian Ministry of Justice.

UNICEF Canada, Toronto, Canada

Lisa Wolff is Director, Policy and Education at UNICEF Canada. She has worked in the organization for more than a decade leading education and policy focused work to advance the rights of Canada’s children to develop to their fullest potential, consistent with international human rights standards. Collaborating with government, institutions, civil society, researchers and private sector partners, Lisa has developed initiatives to advance children’s rights in policy, governance, child related programming and educational curricula. These include training programs, symposia, parliamentary engagement and other efforts to help ensure every childhood is a good one. Lisa is a member of the Board of Directors of PREVNet, the Canadian Coalition for the Rights of Children, and the North-South Partnership for First Nations Children.

She has a bachelor of environmental studies from University of Waterloo, a bachelor of education and master of education from the University of Toronto. Lisa received the Queen Elizabeth ll Diamond Jubilee Medal from the Governor-General of Canada in 2012.

World Health Organization, Switzerland

Marcus Stahlhofer is the Human Rights Advisor for the Department of Child and Adolescent Health (CAH) at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland. He coordinators the work of the WHO in the areas of children’s rights, and is responsible for the integration and application of international human rights norms and standards to various aspects of the organization’s work on child and adolescent health. His work ranges from training WHO staff, government officials, and health professionals to developing and implementing rights-based guidelines and tools to strengthen national legal and policy environments to support child and adolescent health policies and programmes. Prior to his post with WHO, Mr. Stahlhofer worked as a volunteer and human rights specialist in refugee camps in Croatia during the armed conflict, and worked at UNAIDS as the Associate Human Rights Advisor. He holds degrees in International Relations and International Human Rights Protection from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of Kent at Canterbury.

• Côte d’Ivoire
  • Save the Children
• Kenya
  • Action Network for the Disabled
  • Girls as Agents of Change
  • Mtoto News
  • Women of Purpose Community Development Centre
• Morocco
  • Bayti Association
• Mozambique
  • Save the Children
• Namibia
  • LifeLine/ChildLine Namibia
• Nigeria
  • University of Ibadan
• Rwanda
  • Uwezo Youth Empowerment
• Sierra Leone
  • ChildHelp Sierra Leone
  • Children’s Hope Initiative Sierra Leone
  • Freetown City
  • Hands for Children International
  • Youth Help Sierra Leone
• South Africa
  • National Planning Commission
• Tunisia
  • Association Ado+
  • Comité National de Solidarité Laïque
• Uganda
  • Uganda Society for Disabled Children
• Zambia
  • ChildHelp Inc. Zambia
• Zimbabwe
  • Childline Zimbabwe

• Bangladesh
  • Save the Children
• China
  • Save the Children
• India
  • Child rights advocate
  • Save the Children
  • Ummeed Child Development Center
• Japan
  • Bukkyo University
• Lebanon
  • Save the Children
• Nepal
  • Kathmandu Medical College and Teaching Hospital
• Philippines
  • NORFIL Foundation, Inc
• Thailand
  • Childline Thailand Foundation
• Vietnam
  • Save the Children, Center for Rural Development and Vietnam Association for Protection of Children’s Rights
• Yemen
  • Enjaz Foundation for Development

• Albania
  • Child Rights Centre Albania
• Kosovo
  • Save the Children
• Russia
  • Russian Research and Scientific Medical University
  • Ural State Law University
• Serbia
  • Protector of Citizens (Ombudsman)

• Argentina
  • Partnership: FLACSO University and Embassy of the Netherlands to Argentina
• Jamaica
  • University of the West Indies, Mona Campus
• Trinidad and Tobago
  • Early Childhood Development Task Force

• Belgium
  • National Commission on the Rights of the Child
• Canada
  • Dr. Julien Foundation and McGill University
  • Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness
  • Memorial University of Newfoundland
  • Memorial University of Newfoundland, Grenfell Campus
  • Queen’s University
  • Yukon Office of Child and Youth Advocates and Network for Healthy Early Human Development Yukon
• Greece
  • Initiative for Article 12
• Northern Ireland
  • Centre for Children’s Rights, Queen’s University Belfast
• Portugal
  • Child Support Institute
• United States of America
  • Loyola University Chicago
  • University of California, Santa Barbara