A Rights-Based Approach to Child Safety

We organize a wide variety of events, from trainings to workshops, from digital meetings to field visits. Whether we work directly with children or not, everything we do touches children’s lives in some way. 

This is why child safety and child protection concern us all. However, we occasionally confuse these two concepts. 
In this three-day series, which we prepared to create a shared framework, on the first day we will talk about child safety, the second day about child protection, and on the last day, we will discuss the differences between the two concepts.

What do child protection and child safety mean?

Child protection focuses on protecting children from physical, emotional, sexual, and economic violence, abuse, and neglect. It points to the shared responsibility of the state, family, society, and of course, civil society organizations. The goal is for children to grow up in safe and supportive environments.

Child safety covers preventive and protective steps taken to prevent harm from occurring. This approach is directly related to the obligations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child regarding protection from discrimination, growing up in a safe environment, protection of privacy, and ensuring children’s physical and emotional integrity. 

Thus, it focuses on ensuring that adults and institutions in contact with children do not harm them.

Here, we see two levels:

• Child protection comes into play when a risk or violation arises and covers intervention and response processes.
• Child safety refers to preventive, proactive, and internal regulatory steps to prevent harm before any risk occurs. 

The two concepts are parts of the same whole, but they are not the same thing. The first step in this whole is to establish child safety. So how? 

Our direction is clear: Child safety cannot be established without children

Children are not just individuals who need protection; they are subjects who know and can describe how safety should be established. 

To ensure effective child safety, it is necessary to listen to children’s experiences and opinions, and to make their needs part of the process. The boundaries of safety cannot be drawn without children themselves describing those boundaries.

Therefore, let’s consider all the following topics as mechanisms that children can understand, access, and shape with their feedback. Because child safety is meaningful and sustainable only when it is established together.

Essentials for child safety

Child safety doesn’t happen on its own; it requires conscious choices, clear systems, and explicit responsibilities. Within this framework, some elements are truly indispensable.

Making boundaries visible: Codes of conduct

Codes of conduct provide an open and binding framework for everyone who interacts with children. They clarify boundaries from the way children are addressed to physical contact, from the use of photos to social media communications and privacy.

Good intentions are not enough for safe spaces. Written and enforceable rules:

• Reduce uncertainties.
• Protect both children and adults. 
• Make roles, boundaries, and responsibilities visible.

How do we ensure a safe environment?

Child safety is often reduced to the question “How should we act?”. Yet it’s not just about behavior, but also about the environment. The same behavior can be safe in some circumstances and risky in others. Therefore, child safety requires looking not only at individual attitudes but also at the environment and conditions in which these attitudes occur. 

• Where will one-on-one meetings be held? 
• How will the space be arranged? 
• What will the boundaries be for online meetings? 
• How will camera use, recording, messaging, screen sharing, and digital privacy be handled?

When we give clear answers to these questions, uncertainty decreases; conditions become safer for children, and adults can more easily distinguish which circumstances are safe and which are risky.

Systematic evaluation for those in contact with children

It is necessary to evaluate people working with children not only by their professional qualifications or good intentions, but also by their capacity to act in accordance with children’s rights. Therefore, reference checks, previous experiences, and basic awareness of children’s rights should be part of the process.

Being “familiar,” “trustworthy,” or “a good person” is not enough on its own. Whether volunteer or professional, there must be a systematic and transparent evaluation process for everyone who will interact with children.  Such an approach:

• Reduces possible risks
• Clarifies boundaries of responsibility
• Creates a strong child safety culture within the organization

The critical threshold of safety: Reporting and support

Where will a child go if they do not feel safe?

Both the child and adults need to know the answer to this question. Here we face two critical elements of child safety: Safe spaces and a designated person/team.

A safe space is the concrete application of the principle “knowing where to go if something is wrong.” It means children have safe channels within the organization to turn to whenever they feel unsafe, uncomfortable, or believe a boundary has been crossed. 

A safe space includes:

• Identifying a reliable adult the child can reach out to
• Child-friendly explanations (visual, written, or verbal)
• Options for anonymous or open reporting
• Digital or physical feedback boxes

These tools enable a child to safely express themselves if they feel at risk or uncomfortable, or if they encounter a violation of rights.

When managing the process in a safe space, 

• It is crucial that the child’s report is taken seriously and followed up, 
• the process is conducted in an understandable, accessible, and traceable manner, 
• and the child is supported throughout the entire process and does not feel alone.

The designated person or team ensures reports are properly directed and processes are monitored. They also clarify the chain of responsibility.

Observe – Evaluate – Improve: Monitoring and Evaluation

Child safety is sustainable not by one-time measures, but through regular risk assessment. Monitoring and evaluation allow us to see how what we've written works in practice.

As our activities and ways of interacting evolve, so too do risks. That’s why a cyclical approach is needed—one that analyzes the context, identifies risks, develops preventive steps, and regularly reviews the process. Getting feedback from children, families, and the team after every activity is an essential part of this process.

This cycle shows us:

• Where is the risk emerging?
• Which practices empower children?
• Where are boundaries becoming blurred?
• Which areas need to be reorganized?

In short, monitoring and evaluation are the learning cycle of child safety: observe, evaluate, improve.
And most importantly, children must be at the center of this process. Child safety cannot be established without their views and experiences.

At the beginning, we said that child safety and child protection concern us all. Today, we addressed the first step of this responsibility; that is, the preventive and protective measures taken to make sure harm does not occur. In the second part, we will discuss what to do in cases of rights violations, abuse, neglect, or violence.