Children make up 30% of the world’s population, yet they remain virtually invisible in global justice data. While the global justice gap affects an estimated 5.1 billion people worldwide, children experience barriers to justice in distinct, interconnected, and more complex ways.
Despite this reality, justice systems and the data collection methods used to understand them are overwhelmingly designed for adults. Traditional Legal Needs Surveys often exclude children due to narrow legal frameworks, ethical concerns, or the assumption that surveying a « household head » is enough to capture a child’s experience. This leaves a significant portion of the population excluded from the very datasets used to design people-centred solutions. The persistence of the child justice data gap is not inevitable; it is a methodological challenge that requires adaptation of existing practices. To address this, HiiL and the Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures have co-authored a new policy brief: Closing the Child Justice Data Gap: Incorporating Child-Centred Methodologies in Justice Needs Surveys. The brief provides justice sector practitioners, researchers, and policymakers with actionable insights to safely and rigorously measure children’s justice needs.
Unpacking the gap: beyond adult-centric design
To understand why this data gap persists, it helps to look closer at these three methodological barriers. First, surveys often rely on narrow, formal legal frameworks that fail to capture a child’s everyday reality. Children’s justice problems rarely begin or end in a courtroom, often existing entirely outside of the formal legal system. Second, valid ethical and safeguarding concerns often lead to children being excluded entirely, rather than prompting the adaptation of safe methodologies.
Finally, there is the “household head” assumption, whereby adults act as proxies speaking on behalf of the entire household’s justice experiences, including the children. However, adults cannot always accurately recognise or report a child’s distinct justice needs, and these measurements can distort the reality of children’s problems. For example, in HiiL’s 2020 Justice Needs and Satisfaction (JNS) survey in Ethiopia, adults were asked to evaluate the resolution of family disputes. Strikingly, only 26% of those with resolved family problems reported that the outcome brought safety and security for the children. Without gathering the child’s independent perspective, their true lived reality remains unmeasured. Did the child actually feel safe? Were they informed, or were they marginalised by the process?
Child-centred methodology in practice: learning from the field
Closing the data gap requires an evolution of traditional surveys, expanding the parameters to capture lived experiences. To operationalise this, researchers and policymakers can look to successful examples from the field where child-centred methodologies are already being incorporated:
Embracing participatory research (Northern Ireland): True inclusion requires shifting to frameworks where young people serve as active co-producers of data. In a 2014 study on the legal needs of youth in Northern Ireland, researchers placed children at the centre by establishing a Young People’s Advisory Group. This group actively co-designed research questions, data collection tools, and data interpretation. By partnering with trusted intermediaries like schools and youth organisations, researchers were able to safely and meaningfully engage young people.
Committing to qualitative diversity (Burkina Faso): Where standard survey interviews fall short, non-traditional methodologies tailored to children’s cognitive capacities can succeed. In a 2022 JNS, HiiL, together with Terre des hommes in Burkina Faso, used focus groups to capture the justice needs of displaced children (ages 12 to 15). To create a safe environment, these sessions alternated between discussions, group games, and individual artistic expressions like drawing. Pairs of local child protection professionals mediated these sessions to ensure psychosocial support was available throughout.
Establishing a data continuum (Canada): Children, youth, and adults should be captured in justice data to build a complete picture of every justice journey. This includes connecting justice data to other relevant sectors. Canada’s Justice Data Modernisation Initiative does just this, linking justice data across child, youth, and adult stages as well as across relevant sectors. By connecting this information with the health, education, and housing sectors, policymakers can track long-term trajectories and design better early intervention strategies.
Transforming these insights into sustainable field practices is the only way to ensure the global movement towards people-centred justice truly includes everyone. The tools to fix this blind spot already exist, but they must be adapted to justice research and put into practice.
