IJJO Interviews

Dr Wendy O’Brien is a criminologist with research expertise on violence against children, children's rights, and children's access to justice. With a sustained focus on the legal and therapeutic responses to children in conflict with the law, Wendy’s research comprises both legal scholarship and research on the practical implementation of public policy - including evaluation of social sector service delivery to children. Wendy has provided expert evidence to a number of child protection reviews, and she regularly serves on research advisory boards for projects on child sexual assault. She is also a current member of the Asia-Pacific Council for Juvenile Justice (APCJJ). Wendy lectures in criminology at Deakin University in Australia. Prior to her appointment at Deakin, Wendy served seven years as Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Crime Commission where she conducted intelligence led research and provided policy advice on legal and therapeutic responses to children in conflict with the law.

Marco de Milato is the CEFA (European Committee for Agricultural Training) Regional Coordinator in Kenya and Somalia. He holds a Master degree in International Relations from the University of Genoa, Italy. He has certificates on various development topics in the realms of international cooperation, project writing, Monitoring and Evaluation, Lobby and Advocacy. His career is focused on human rights management, child protection and children rights EU funded programs in East Africa and India. He began in Senegal in 2005 and from 2007 to 2010 he worked as Country Coordinator in India, focusing on Child Protection and education. Since late 2010 he is based in Nairobi – Kenya, as CEFA coordinator for Kenya and Somalia. Furthermore, since 2015 Marco is the national representative for Italian NGOs in Kenya. He has wealth of experience in project management as well as in the development of new project proposals for both private and public donors. CEFA has over ten years’ experience of consolidated practice, capacity building, collaborative structural reforms implementation and inception of rights-based service delivery approaches within Kenyan juvenile and criminal justice sectors. As an organization working in both children statutory institutions and state correctional facilities, it has developed strategic partnerships with agencies from the Government of Kenya (GoK) and other Non-State Actors (NSAs) which deal with the administration of Justice.

Interviewees from the Department of Child Law, in the context of the 'Improving Juvenile Justice Systems in Europe' project: Prof. Dr. Ton Liefaard (right of the picture) - Full Professor and UNICEF Chair in Children's Rights at Leiden University. Dr. Stephanie Rap (centre of the picture) - Assistant Professor. Apollonia Bolscher, LL.M. (left of the picture) - Researcher/Junior Lecturer. The Department of Child Law at Leiden University is a knowledge centre dedicated to academic research and education for both students and professionals in the field of child law and children’s rights. A wide range of areas is covered including children’s rights, child protection, juvenile justice and family law. The Department conducts scientific research projects for governments, international organisations, including UNICEF, the Council of Europe, the IJJO, and different national institutions, including the Dutch children’s ombudsperson. The Department of Child Law offers the only LL.M programme on Dutch Child Law in the Netherlands. In addition, it offers the international programme Master of Laws: Advanced Studies in International Children’s Rights. Moreover, the department is responsible for various courses in the Bachelor’s programme of Leiden Law School and post-academic training programmes for professionals in the Netherlands and abroad. The Department also hosts the yearly international summer school ‘Frontiers of Children’s Rights’.

Kate Moffett, Practice Manager at Include Youth organisation in Northern Ireland. She joined Include Youth in 2013 and is highly experienced in the area of youth participation, particularly with young people who face significant barriers to engaging. She has 12 years’ experience of working with young people in the justice system facing the most challenging barriers to participation and to having ‘a voice’ within society. Currently, Ms Moffet manages the development and evaluation of practices, including the setting of practice standards. She is the Designated Safeguarding Officer at Include Youth, and is therefore responsible for safeguarding policies and procedures. She ensures that participation of young people is embedded throughout Include Youth and that young people have a say in decision-making and at management level. As well as this, Ms Moffet is an internal verifier for all OCN NI (Open College Network, Northern Ireland) qualifications at Include Youth, and co-delivers rights training to young people and 3rd sector organisations.

Sabine Mandl is a senior researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights (BIM), Vienna, working in the field of children’s and women’s rights with special emphasis on “access to justice” and “violence”. She studied Political Science, Journalism and Communication Science and holds a Trainer Certificate for Adult Education. At the BIM, she is currently responsible for the EU funded project “Improving Juvenile Justice Systems in Europe – Training for Professionals”, which is led by IJJO (International Juvenile Justice Observatory). From 2013 to 2015 she was the coordinator of the EU-Daphne project on “Access to specialized victim support services for women with disabilities who have experienced violence”, carried out by four European countries – Austria, Germany, United Kingdom and Iceland. Additionally, she has been engaged in several projects focussed on, for example, the “integration of refugee and asylum seeking children in the educational system in Europe”, as well as “children’s view on engaging in European and international decision-making”. Apart from her work at the BIM, she has been a lecturer at the University of Vienna since 2002. Working within the faculty of history and political science, she lectures on women’s rights, media and politics, the political system and qualitative empirical methods.