INTRODUCTION

According to Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) children have a right to participate in legal proceedings and the child must be given the opportunity to be heard in any legal proceedings affecting them. Age limits can be used, but according to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, they cannot be absolute and they should leave space for younger children to have the opportunity to be heard by the judge. It also follows from international standards that children should be heard directly (by a judge) or indirectly (by an expert outside the courtroom), and they should be able to choose this themselves. The CRC remains silent about the child’s right to (independently) initiate proceedings. But from other international standards it can be deduced that children who are confronted with legal proceedings are entitled to child-friendly proceedings and also have the right of access to justice and the possibility to challenge court decisions that are relevant to them. Furthermore, according to international standards children must be provided with a legal representative or a guardian ad litem (GAL) when there is a potential conflict between children and their parents.

In Dutch civil law, other than in exceptional cases, children are not competent to participate autonomously aslitigants. Even though children lack competence to participate autonomously in civil law proceedings, they do have the right to be involved in family and child protection proceedings. For children from the age of 12 years or older, this is embodied in the right to be heard in court. In 2016 the Government Committee of the Reassessment of Parenthood recommended to the Dutch government that special attention should be paid to the procedural position of children in family law and the question whether improvements were necessary from an international Children’s rights and a psychological and pedagogical perspective.

This contribution discusses the legal position of children and forms of child participation in Dutch family and child protection proceedings. In family and child protection proceedings, in particular, children are confronted with court proceedings in which decision-making takes place that can have an enormous impact on their lives.