Education Team: Developing promising practices from the field extension programme in Bidadi, working directly in 26 habitations and 15 schools and ploughing these into recommendations for reform of policy, law and practice.

Juvenile Justice Team: The Observation Camp as a method of restoring children from institutions back to their families evolved by the Salesians of Don Bosco, incorporated into the JJ Draft Rules for Karnataka, and now being replicated in other States. Drawing from the Case Conferencing methodology used in the Department of Psychiatry, NIMHANS, as well as in South Korea and helping to create recognition of the need for multi-disciplinary work in the various statutory settings under the Juvenile Justice Act.

Education Team: Survey to identify out of school children, especially children from the marginalized sections within the Banikuppe Panchayat of our Field Extension Programme, taking all appropriate measure to mainstream them and sharing using these insights and data for lobbying with the Dept of Education, Govt of Karnataka, highlighting contrasts in data generated by them.

Juvenile Justice Team: Research on children in need of care and protection and children in conflict with law and making submissions to the concerned Child Welfare Committees and Juvenile Justice Boards, as well as the Department of Women and Child Development, GoK for better implementation of the Act as well as a contribution to Rules under the Act. For example, documentation of case studies, collection of statistics of children in the Observation Home Bangalore etc.

Education Team: Critique of the Right to Education Bill 2005 and recommendations made at local, regional, national and South Asian levels

Juvenile Justice Team: Critique of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000, and recommendations submitted for law reform, Critique of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights Bill and submitted recommendations for reform and Critique of the JJ Model Rules (2007) and submitted recommendations for reform.

Education Team: Engaging closely with the UNCRC and attempting to build compliance in India . The team has also critiqued the Berlin Declaration, and engaged with the SAARC Convention, contributing to deeper understanding of the normative framework on Right to Education.

Juvenile Justice Team: Research on the UN Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (1985), the UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty (1990), and other similar documents. This was used as a basis for submission of recommendations for minimum standards to the Government of Karnataka for better monitoring of statutory institutions and compliance with our legal obligations. Deeper analysis and critique of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) has also been undertaken, including a paper submitted on the Human Development and Capabilities Approach, the Human Rights Approach, and Child Protection in India , for an International Conference organized by the Human Development and Capabilities Association (HDCA) in 2008.

Education Team; Research was undertaken on Panchayati Raj Act and building linkages between the Right to Education and community participation mechanisms. This was submitted in the form of the recommendations for a bye law on School Monitoring and Development Committees, which was finally notified by the Government of Karnataka.

Juvenile Justice Team: Research on the Orphanages and Charitable Homes (Supervision and Control) Act 1960 and submissions of recommendations for Registration and Monitoring of residential care facilities under the JJ Act to the Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Karnataka. Some initial work has also been done to engage with the challenge of evolving a Uniform Child Code, as a follow up to the Child Code Bill in 2000.

Indian law has drawn extensively from the law and jurisprudence from other countries such as the UK . The Centre believes that in today’s globalized world, it is beneficial to draw from the legal regime, as well as experiential and academic insights of other countries and ground this information in our Indian context, in order to inform policy, law and practice.

Education Team: Some work has been done to engage with the legal regime of South Africa .

Juvenile Justice Team: Research on the work undertaken by the South African Law Commission, especially its extensive report on Juvenile Justice (Project 106) and submission of recommendations to Government of India as part of the recommendations for law reform on Juvenile Justice. Research and lobbying on issues concerning the Child Welfare Committees has also drawn from the UK , New Zealand and South Africa Legal regimes.

1.      To undertake Participatory Action Research with all relevant actors and stakeholders to impact Policy, Law and Practice on Child Rights:

Researchers at the Centre have been deeply inspired by the PAR Philosophy and have attempted to adopt this approach in its work on child rights. We have taken on the challenge to be an integral and nodal part of processes that integrate theory with practice along with those who are actually engaged in fieldwork. This ensures that the role of the University in being engaged in the social change processes at the grass root is strengthened. It builds a genuine space for the exchange of ideas as well as bridging the divides between academia and activism, as well as law and social reality, thereby moving away from the ‘ivory tower’ approach.

Education Team: SDMC Bye laws evolved through PAR processes

Juvenile Justice Team: Extensive processes were facilitated to engage in participatory processes to evolve policy and contribute to law reform (1999 – 2001). This created the foundation for a constructive, critical and collaborative relationship between CCL, civil society actors and the state duty bearers from the Department of Women and Child Development, as well as the Department of Police. It also enabled CCL to play a nodal role in facilitating a more democratic and nuanced dialogue between state and civil society actors as member of the Karnataka JJ Rules drafting Committee (2008 – 9), and influencing similar work at the National level through a sharing of the research and experience at the JJ National Consultation held in Vijayawada in Feb 2008.

2.      To initiate Field Action Projects as part of the Universities responsibility to directly protect and promote the rights of children, play an active role in social change, elicit insights from praxis and provide a space for student engagement in field work.

Education Team: The FAP in Bidadi. Dr. Armaity Desai, ex Director of TISS was invited to provide advisory support to CCL in the early years of setting up this FAP, in order to draw from the rich experiential insights of the Tata Institute.

Juvenile Justice Team: The Field Action programmes undertaken in statutory institutions in Bangalore Urban and Rural, as well as in Raichur District of Karnataka, in order to evolve policy and law (1999-2002). The Field Action programmes initiated in the recent past in Government Schools in the Nagarbhavi area, involving the students of NLSIU. The team has also taken up individual cases of children and worked along with the KSLSA in order to move the Courts and facilitate mediation for speedy justice.

3.      To contribute to the legal education at NLSIU by integrating Research, Field Action and Teaching on Child Rights and building a greater convergence between Law and Social Change within the University

At the heart of the CCL’s agenda is an effort to build a community of researchers, students and faculty committed to understanding and using law as a means of achieving social change, with a special focus on child rights.

Education Team: The team has drawn from its many years of field engagement on the right to education and has taken numerous classes on the issue at the LLB and LLM levels, while also making presentations at the local, regional, national and South Asian level. Students were involved in the drafting of the SDMC Bye law. The team also initiated the pilot extension programme Gunathamaka Shala Shikshnakkagi Janandolana (A Peoples Movement for Right to Education) in Ramnagar Taluk, Bangalore Rural District, from which it generates field insights to feed into research and teaching within the University.

Juvenile Justice Team: Through its extensive prior and current field action within civil society and statutory institutions, the team has recognized the extreme dearth of child rights lawyers in the country, the profound and rapid changes in child rights law and judicial authorities, the need to develop a professionally competent cadre of child rights advocates and the role of CCL in response to these. It has also identified the sudden surge in opportunities in this regard specifically with regard to the Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS). A paper was authored along with another consultant on the above issue ‘Changing Context of Child Rights in India: A need for integration of Research, Practice and Teaching, presented at Regional Seminar on Strengthening Child Rights as an Academic Discourse in South Asia, on 26.2.2007 at Dhaka, being published by Save the Children, conducted two Seminar Courses on Child Rights for 5^th Year students, initiated work on developing the PG Diploma Course on Child Rights Law using Distance Mode, the PG Diploma on Child Rights using Residential mode in partnership with TISS, the Clinical Legal Education Course on Child Rights still being evolved. The team also invites students to partake in research processes, mentoring students in field placements in child rights settings, facilitating internships at CCL, etc. This also involves providing spaces and opportunities for interaction between students, practitioners and experts from various disciplines in order to trigger intellectual growth, sensitivity and awareness while enabling testing of classroom learning against the realities of social injustice. Involvement of students in 9 subgroups created on various activities including data collection, representation of children before the Child Welfare Committees and Juvenile Justice Boards etc., instituting a tradition of celebration of International Human Rights Day at NLSIU etc

Litigation is an historically significant and still often powerful force for social change, and has been central to many of the most well-known and important achievements in social change work. CCL works to develop an understanding of  how litigation can function as a tool of social reform and in evaluating the uses and limits of litigation in this context. The proposed Clinical Legal Education Course on Child Rights being developed by the JJ team will focus extensively on this issue.

4.      Creating and sustaining spaces for field activists to share their experiential insights and debate these with students, practitioners and academicians in consultative processes, with the objective of impacting policy, law and practice.

Education Team: The Education team has played a nodal role in facilitating civil society-state dialogue at the level of the Cluster Resource Centres, Block Resource Centres, District Institute for Education and Training (DIET) the Directorate of State Education Research and Training DSERT, and all other such spaces at state level.

Juvenile Justice Team: The team invited Ms. Fiona Dias Saxena, a practitioner on the issue of Child Sexual Abuse to document her field insights in 2004, and is now building on this initial work by organizing a National Consultation on the issue in partnership with TULIR another field based NGO specializing on this issue. NLSIU students are actively participating in this process.

5.      To initiate as well as respond to opportunities to ensure accountability from State and civil society as duty bearers in child rights.

Law and Social change also involves reforming the institutions that structure and govern our society, including administrative agencies, judicial bodies, schools, child welfare institutions, etc. Forging partnerships between public and private institutions also constitutes a promising avenue for reform. CCL has undertaken work that builds understanding on how to reform and harness existing political, social, legal, and economic institutions, and build accountability from both State and civil society. Further, social change requires not only mobilization, but also creating institutions capable of sustaining movement work. Building and leading lasting organizations of this kind depends on critical contributions from lawyers. CCL has undertaken work in order to engage with ways in which law can be instrumental to the development and leadership of social change organizations.

Education Team: The basic concept behind the SDMC is to ensure community based social action to demand accountability from the State and claim the right to equitable quality school education.

Juvenile Justice Team: NLSIU had been requested to draft a new Act on JJ by Ministry of Social Justice, GoI in 1999. NLSIU submits drafts; while CCL organizes national consultation to evolve policy and continues to sustain this work, considering that we have a plethora of legislation, but still no policy clarity evolved through evidence backed research and democratic debate. The team has also played a pivotal role in facilitating multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder consultation to feed into drafts for the Karnataka Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Rules 2002. Contributed to the normative framework by incorporating a rights perspective in delegated legislation, not only in Karnataka but also in other States that drew from this draft/the Karnataka Rules such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh etc.

The team submitted recommendations to GoI for law reform on the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights Bill (2005), the Juvenile Justice Amendments (2006) and the JJ Model Rules (2007), ratification of Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (1980). The JJ team initiated deeper dialogue with representatives from the Karnataka State Legal Services Authority (KSLSA) over the past two years resulting in a joint project – ‘Towards Progressive realization of Child Rights’ and also an inclusion of a CCL representative on the KSLSA Sub Committee on Child Rights at the State Level. At the national level, a chair on Juvenile Justice was instituted by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India. CCL has received a number of requests from this Ministry and also the new Ministry of Women and Child Development, GoI to be part of various Committees or to send in responses on certain issues. For eg we were requested to send in our professional legal opinion on whether India should ratify the Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction which was submitted in 2006.

The team has been doing extensive work in order to ensure effective implementation of the Juvenile Justice Act. As member of the Selection Committee in Karnataka to appoint members to the judicial authorities, the team developed guidelines and played an important role in professionalizing procedures contributing significantly to effective implementation of the Act. We have also provided socio-legal advice and opinions to State and Central Government as well as competent authorities under the JJ Act on numerous issues. In general, CCL’s lobbying and advocacy work has enabled including legal claims and strategic approaches have value added to the existing NGO campaigns.

6.      To participate in and value add to social movements in general and the child rights movement in particular:

The Centre has recognized that the child rights movement in India is in its nascent stage, and needs to engage more closely with the broader discourse on issues such as the role of the state in the globalization era, the role of academia in the Women’s Movement and the learnings for the child rights movement etc.

Education Team: The team is a member of numerous civil society campaigns such as the Campaign against Child Labour, and has also taken leadership roles in many of these. It has also contributed significantly to the processes in making education a fundamental right in India by helping found the National Alliance for the Fundamental Right to Education (NAFRE) and organizing various consultations.

Juvenile Justice Team: Representatives of the team have been a member of various networks such as the CRY initiated Quality Institutional Care and Alternatives (QICA), and the emerging National Network on Juvenile Justice, on which we are founder Core Team members, playing a critical facilitatory role. A significant contribution has already been made to this network through detailed submissions on the vision for the network drawing from CCL’s own experience and insights, having engaged with social movements such as National Alliance for People’s Movements (NAPM), the World Social Forum and Asian Social Forum etc.

7.      To develop and conduct Capacity Building on child rights law.

Education Team: SDMC Training programmes conducted, involved in developing training materials on education in collaboration with the Education Department, playing a major and significant role.

Juvenile Justice Team: The team developed curriculum for capacity building of Superintendents, Probation Officers, Child Welfare Committee members and Juvenile Justice Board members at the State and Regional levels. A total of 10 programmes were organized in collaboration with the National Institute of Social Defence as well as the Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Karnataka. Insights from CCL’s Research, Field action and Teaching undertaken at NLSIU was fed into these processes. Members of the team have made presentations and authored publications on various issues, contributing to the discourse on child rights at various local, national and international fora. The team has also translated 5 major UN Guidelines on Juvenile Justice into Kannada. The PG courses and the Clinical Courses being evolved is also relevant here.

8.      To build links with other issues so as to broaden perspectives, build solidarity and be part of broader civil society processes on related issues outside Karnataka State.

CCL as a whole has initiated and facilitated a number of discussions and processes with the hope of building a broader inter-sectoral as well as inter-research centre dialogue on law and society issues. The Juvenile Justice team risen above the artificial boundaries of the Juvenile Justice Act and has attempted to broaden its reach on issues concerning children  in need of care and protection and in need of justice. Two examples of Field Action Research undertaken outside Karnataka are:

1. Children and violence: The JJ team initiated innovative work on the issue of children as victims of armed conflicts in Manipur: One of the team’s researchers responded to the plight of children affected by violence in Manipur, undertaking field research and authoring a paper on the same. This has contributed to the JJ Rules, capacity building on Juvenile Justice in the North East region as well as policy on the same.

2. Children and Communalism: The JJ team responded to the plight of child victims of the pogrom in Gujarat by helping to evolve the Bangalore Citizen’s response and roping in students to accompany CCL researchers for Relief work in the camps. A three day orientation programme was organized in partnership with Prof Shekhar Seshadri, Dept of Psychiatry, NIMHANS, which enabled us to get a valuable insight and exposure to our role and response to violence, especially in the context of human rights violations. A study on communalism and children was also conducted and an attempt made to support a local initiative in Gujarat working with children affected by the communal violence.

9.      Contribution to academia through research, teaching and publications on child rights .

The Centre has been doing pioneering work in the area of JJ, School education, Child Labour and Child Rights in general. This has been in terms of Research, Field Action, Teaching, Networking, Lobbying and Advocacy on issues related to the law and human rights of children. We have also undertaken activities to go deeper into the causative factors that contribute towards violation of Child Rights.  It was under this rubric that we channelized all our field based experiences, practical learnings and theoretical reflections into the academic curriculum at the National Law School through various courses. CCL has also published articles and books on various issues as part of the University’s core mandate of generating and disseminating knowledge. The Documentation Centre set up with funding from CRY has helped to supplement the Library facilities and provides a space for more focused resource building and sharing on child rights issues.

10.  To identify suitable funding partners who can support the Centre, thereby sustaining work on child rights law:

The norm within NLSIU is that Research Centres have to generate their own funding, and will not be supported by the income of the University generated solely from the student’s fees. This has resulted in CCL researchers generating more than 5 crores since its inception.

11.  To set up specialized Centres as well as work in collaboration with other Research Centres at NLSIU:

a) Documentation Centre

This Centre was conceived by researchers at CCL as an exclusive space that serves as an information hub from where research activities emanate or are strengthened, with a focus on child rights to begin with. It collates information from traditional and non- traditional sources on issues that affect the majority in India . Documents, alternate reports and information that is not maintained in the library is made available here.  The Centre also serves as a space for discussion and debate, facilitating the user to gain a more nuanced and balanced understanding of the issue; while at the same time continuing to make critical enquiry. The Documentation Centre has managed to source a number of good articles and publications on various issues especially Child Rights through the active support of the team at CCL, and is now also supporting the work undertaken by other Research Centres working on Law and Society issues at NLSIU.

b) Centre for Labour Studies (CLS):

CCLs experience indicates that NLSIU can play an interventionist role in influencing legislative change. This view coupled with the experience and expertise on labour issues of Prof. Babu Mathew, the then Faculty Coordinator of the Centre prompted us to initiate the Labour Studies project, also financially supported by Hivos. Activities of this Centre were suspended in 2006 as the work planned under existing funds were completed. Some of the major contributions have been in the area of Labour law legislation and legislative changes, restructuring of capital Labour relations and its impact on workers rights, interventions in the collective bargaining process, activist education and training, campaigning for Minimum Wages Awareness and the Elimination of Labour Exploitation Tactics.

c) CCL’s Onsite Outreach Day Care Centre:

The Centre had financially supported and monitored the effective functioning of the Outreach Onsite day care centre for children of construction workers in NLSIU in collaboration with an organization called Outreach. This project catered to children of workers employed in the various ongoing construction projects in the campus for a number of years and provided a space for active engagement of NLSIU students in the lives of marginalized children on campus. The Centre is currently closed due to completion of construction work.