Justice is not a privilege, it’s a right for every child, says Justice Savitri Ratho

BHUBANESWAR: Centre for Child Rights (CCR), National Law University Odisha (NLUO), and Child Rights and You (CRY) hosted a high-level panel discussion as part of the 5th World Congress on Justice with Children.

A high-level panel discussion on ‘Advancing Child-Centred Justice’ was organised in Cuttack as an official satellite event of the 5th World Congress on Justice with Children, with participants and speakers from around the world.

The World Congress took place in Madrid from June 2 and June 4.

To deepen the conversations and reforms, the 5th World Congress allowed official satellite events in different parts of the world which had to sync with the dates and agenda of the Congress. The hosts and topics were selected through an intensely competitive process.

The theme of the 5th World Congress was ‘Advancing Child-Centred Justice: Preventing and Responding to Violence Affecting Children in Justice Systems.’ The aim was to highlight entrenched systemic issues and create an inclusive, rehabilitative justice system for the children.

This year, the spotlight was the General Comment 27 of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. General Comment 27 guides states and their instruments on implementing the rights of children in the context of access to justice and effective remedies. This event was to interpret why and how to make children’s access to justice a lived reality.

The event was attended by a distinguished panel of eminent practitioners with credentialed work in child rights, justice systems, and public administration.

The panel included Justice Madan Bhimarao Lokur, Chairperson of the United Nations’ Internal Justice Council and former Judge of the Supreme Court of India; Justice Savitri Ratho, Judge of the Orissa High Court and the Chair of the Juvenile Justice Committee of the Orissa High Court; Shubha Sarma, Principal Secretary of the Department of Women and Child Development, Government of Odisha; Prof. Ved Kumari, Vice Chancellor, NLUO and Patron-in-Chief, Centre for Child Rights; Sonal Kapoor, Founder-CEO of Protsahan India Foundation; Rangin Pallav Tripathy, Professor of Law cum Registrar of NLUO and Subhendu Bhattacharjee, Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange, CRY.

The panel was moderated by Prof. Biraj Swain, Chief Minister’s Chair Professor and Director, Centre for Child Rights – NLUO.

The panel deliberated on various aspects of children’s access to justice in the legal systems and in their everyday lives.

Prof Rangin Pallav Tripathy highlighted the fact that such periodic Congresses raised the concern about the plight of children around the world, the progress necessary and the back-slides in gains still happening.

Justice Madan Lokur emphasised the need for meaningful access to justice for children—as victims, as accused, and as those in need of care and protection, in all their avatars. He highlighted the underreporting of violence against children, alarming backlog in inquiries, and re-victimisation faced by survivors during the trial due to systemic delays and inadequate support systems.

Social audit

He called for urgent social audits of the child protection commissions, children’s court, political will, and a move towards restorative justice.

“Children in conflict with the law or in need of support from the justice system must be treated with empathy,” he said. “However, the system needs a social audit as well as the performance audit of schemes through three stages: awareness, implementation, and audit,” he said.

Justice Savitri Ratho stressed that access must be transformative, not merely physical. She underscored the need for trauma-informed processes and regular monitoring under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2015, especially for marginalized children.

“Justice is not a privilege to be earned; it is a promise to be kept for every child,” she said.

Shubha Sarma shared the Odisha government’s commitment through schemes like Subhadra and Ashirbaad. She highlighted trauma-informed care, kinship adoption, and inclusive rehabilitation as central to reducing incarceration and ensuring dignity for every child.

Timely justice

“Timely execution of justice could help children come back to normal life. Odisha is taking bold steps toward the implementation of restorative justice,” she said.

Sonal Kapoor emphasised that every child’s testimony emerges through a nervous situation deeply shaped by trauma, and stressed the importance of understanding child neurobiology as she educated the house on how trauma impacts memory, behaviour, and a child’s ability to cope with legal processes.

Subhendu Bhattacharjee said that access to justice for CRY in courtroom and beyond. “It is the right to be heard, to be safe, to grow up with dignity and equity, and to be treated fairly when in contact with institutions of the state,” he said.

Prof. Ved Kumari advocated for a broad, child-centred definition of justice.

She also highlighted that the availability of services was not coterminous with accessibility, and the metric that mattered more was accessibility. She also spoke about the need for better financing and better / more sensitive human resources to enable and ensure children’s access to justice, especially at the last mile.

The World Congress on Justice with Children is a global platform that convenes every five years to further the policy, practice and discourse on child-centred justice.