Child Protection Systems Across the World

I prosjektperiode 1.10.2024 til 30.9.2025 har prosjektet publisert flere artikler basert på surveymaterialet som ble utformet i forrige periode, i tillegg til øvrige publikasjoner (5 artikler). Det har vært flere faglige formidlinger (13). Prosjektmedarbeidere har presentert forskning på IPSA World Congress of Political Science 2025 i Seoul, Sør Korea; ECPR General Conference 2025 i Tessalonika, Hellas; på EUSARF 2025 i Zagreb, Kroatia; Nasjonal fagkonferanse i statsvitenskap 2025, Bergen; Barnevernkonferansen 2024, Bergen; The International Conference on Adoption Policy in the 20th Century in Magdeburg, Germany; og Bergen Exchanges on Law & Social Transformation 2025, Bergen.

Societies are at an intersection when it comes to how children are treated. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) of 1989 is today universally ratified, and has led to increased attention around children's rights and welfare across the globe. Further, the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development puts the world’s most vulnerable and marginalized people – including children – at the top of the political agenda. The emerging focus on children’s rights, and the growing role of the state as the protector of these rights, underlines the importance of empirical knowledge and theoretical insights about child protection systems. We know that governments’ interpretation of children's rights, and how they choose or are able to respect and protect these rights, varies a great deal across the world. However, the existing typologies of child protection have limitations, and we lack empirical data that allows for global comparisons. CPS-WORLD aims for transdisciplinary research, and will combine innovative methodological approaches and cross-country examinations, applying several data sources and combining survey, vignettes, experiments and text analysis. The project is the most comprehensive cross-country study ever undertaken in this field. It is pioneering in its empirical and critical ambition to explain the decisive factors and mechanisms in child protection systems. We will conduct randomized survey experiments to generate unique data identifying possible causal mechanisms to explain differences in the normative foundation of child protection systems. This project breaks new ground in that it analyses and compares the public’s and the judiciary´s views on children in vulnerable situations. CPS-WORLD will offer theory development in child protection, a field with a nascent research base, that will serve as a tool for both describing and explaining cross-country differences.