Aoife is an Honorary Researcher at the University of Liverpool's European Children’s Rights Unit, which aims to progress children’s rights through research, and is part of a team training NHS nurses in consent and children's rights across the UK. She is also an academic fellow at the Inner Temple which trains barristers in England and Wales. She has held academic positions at the University of Liverpool's School of Law, the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, and the Irish Centre for Human Rights. She has also worked for NGOs such as Save the Children and Amnesty International (Vice-Chair of the Irish Executive Committee 2004-2010).
In her teaching, Aoife brings the law to life for students, applying law concepts and facts to memes and other facets of popular culture. In 2021 she won UCC's President's Award for Excellence in Teaching https://www.ucc.ie/en/law/news/ucc-school-of-law-celebrates-colleagues-success-at-the-university-sta.... Aoife was also a 2020-2021 winner of a ‘Teaching Hero Award’ from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and the Union of Students in Ireland.
Biography
Prof. Aoife Daly teaches law, and specialises in human rights law. Aoife's research focuses on human rights based approaches and children's rights in areas which include environmental rights, climate activism, and access to justice. She is at present researching children/youth and how their environmental activism is impacting human rights law (see https://academic.oup.com/hrlr/article/22/2/ngac011/6565727). She is a member of the Global Network of Human Rights and the Environment, and UCC's Environmental Research Institute. In 2023 she secured a European Research Council Consolidator Grant to build a team to carry out a large scale research study on child/youth climate justice - inside and outside the courts - around the world.
Aoife has extensive experience working directly with children/youth on their rights, particularly through art and drama (see https://www1.essex.ac.uk/news/event.aspx?e_id=3682). She is at present part of a team running a biodiversity youth citizens' assembly for the Department of Housing (Ireland). She co-wrote with Laura Lundy a Synthesis Report on Children’s Rights and Climate Justice for the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children (October 2022). She has also been part of facilitating the consultation process for the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child's forthcoming general comment on the right of children to a healthy environment (see https://gnhre.org/community/gnhre-co-hosts-the-thematic-consultation-to-inform-the-general-comment-o...).
In 2018 she published the globally celebrated book 'Children, Autonomy and the Courts: Beyond the Right to be Heard' (see https://brill.com/view/title/35870) with Brill/Nijhoff, arguing that courts should support and prioritise children’s own wishes to the extent possible when making decisions about them. One reviewer said: ‘Thoughtful, well written and interesting, Daly’s book demonstrates what needs to be done (and why) to further advance children’s participation rights’(Child and Family Law Quarterly, Vol 31, No 3, 2019). Her next book (forthcoming with Routledge in 2024) is entitled 'Child/youth climate activism and international law: Shaping the human right to a healthy environment'. It analyses the ground breaking effects of recent child/youth environmental activism on international human rights law.
In 2020 she secured a large grant to research with Swedish colleagues 2020-2023 how and whether equality law can encompass and benefit children as a group (funded by the Ragnar Soderberg foundation - https://ragnarsoderbergsstiftelse.se/pernilla-leviner); a particularly important question in a climate crisis which disproportionately affects children/youth.
From 2019-2021 Aoife researched how a greater evidence base can be brought to how the law treats children’s decision-making on issues such as consent to medical treatment, and criminal culpability. This was funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation (https://www.isrf.org/fellows-projects/aoife-daly/). In 2018 she also led a team advising the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission on good practice examples for making rights a reality in the UK (see https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/law/2-research/ilhru/EHRC,Enhancing,the,Status,of,UN,Treat...).
Aoife is an Honorary Researcher at the University of Liverpool's European Children’s Rights Unit, which aims to progress children’s rights through research, and is part of a team training NHS nurses in consent and children's rights across the UK. She is also an academic fellow at the Inner Temple which trains barristers in England and Wales. She has held academic positions at the University of Liverpool's School of Law, the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, and the Irish Centre for Human Rights. She has also worked for NGOs such as Save the Children and Amnesty International (Vice-Chair of the Irish Executive Committee 2004-2010).
In her teaching, Aoife brings the law to life for students, applying law concepts and facts to memes and other facets of popular culture. In 2021 she won UCC's President's Award for Excellence in Teaching https://www.ucc.ie/en/law/news/ucc-school-of-law-celebrates-colleagues-success-at-the-university-sta.... Aoife was also a 2020-2021 winner of a ‘Teaching Hero Award’ from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and the Union of Students in Ireland.
Research Interests
Aoife's primary research relates to human rights based approaches and particularly children's rights. She specialises in children's autonomy rights, particularly in relation to their activism and litigation on the right to a healthy environment (see https://academic.oup.com/hrlr/article/22/2/ngac011/6565727).
Aoife's research interests include law and human rights from interdisciplinary perspectives. She has developed a ground breaking body of work on children's autonomy in international human rights law, including 'competence' and the legal grey areas around childhood and adulthood. She has also written extensively on human rights based approaches to issues such as kinship care and sex/relationships education.
Research Grants
| Project | Funding Body | Start Date | End Date | Award | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Swedish/Irish Law | Foreign Research Institute | 01-OCT-20 | 31-MAR-24 | €120,249.00 | |
| Youth Climate Justice. | Horizon Europe | 28-OCT-23 | 31-OCT-28 | €1,998,870.00 | |
| Youth climate activism: Transforming generativity through the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child | Enterprise Irl | 28-OCT-21 | 28-FEB-23 | €14,401.00 | |
| Early Career Fellowship | Foreign Research Institute | 30-OCT-20 | 31-JUL-23 | €30,687.00 |
Publications
Books
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| (2024) | Treated like a child – Non-discrimination, children as a group, and international human rights law (forthcoming). Aoife Daly, Pernilla Leviner, Rebecca Stern (2024) Treated like a child – Non-discrimination, children as a group, and international human rights law (forthcoming). Leiden: Brill. [Details] | |
| (2024) | Child/youth climate activism and international law: Shaping the human right to a healthy environment (forthcoming). Aoife Daly (2024) Child/youth climate activism and international law: Shaping the human right to a healthy environment (forthcoming). Oxfordshire: Routledge. [DOI] [Details] | |
| (2018) | Children, Autonomy and the Courts: Beyond the Right to be Heard. Daly, A (2018) Children, Autonomy and the Courts: Beyond the Right to be Heard. Leiden: Brill/Nijhoff. [Full Text] [Details] | |
| (2016) | A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 15: The Right to Freedom of Association and Peaceful Assembly. Daly, A (2016) A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 15: The Right to Freedom of Association and Peaceful Assembly. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. [DOI] [Details] |
Book Chapters
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| (2024) | '‘Child Rights Law and Middle Childhood’ in John Todres and Ursula Kilkelly (eds) Child Development and Children’s Rights (forthcoming, New York Press, 2023)' Aoife Daly and Amy Walsh (2024) '‘Child Rights Law and Middle Childhood’ in John Todres and Ursula Kilkelly (eds) Child Development and Children’s Rights (forthcoming, New York Press, 2023)' In: Child Development and Children’s Rights. NY: NYU Press. [Details] | |
| (2023) | ''The Case of Young People v Government of Ireland Supreme Court of Ireland'' Aoife Daly and Orla Kelleher (2023) ''The Case of Young People v Government of Ireland Supreme Court of Ireland'' In: The Anthropocene Judgments Project. London: Routledge. [Details] | |
| (2022) | 'Hearing children in civil law proceedings' Aoife Daly and Aisling Parkes (2022) 'Hearing children in civil law proceedings' In: Miranda Horvath (eds). Oxford Handbook of Forensic Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Details] | |
| (2022) | 'The Best Interests Principle and the Evolution of International Human Rights Law: Revisiting Eekelaar’s Dynamic Self-Determinism Model’' Aoife Daly, Ursula Kilkelly and Conor O’Mahony (2022) 'The Best Interests Principle and the Evolution of International Human Rights Law: Revisiting Eekelaar’s Dynamic Self-Determinism Model’' In: Essays in Honour of John Eekelaar. Cambridge: Intersentia. [Details] | |
| (2021) | 'Human Rights and Poverty' Aoife Daly and Alan Connolly (2021) 'Human Rights and Poverty' In: An Emphasis on Social Rights: A boost for the popular rights discourse?. London: elgar. [Details] |
Peer Reviewed Journals
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| (2023) | 'Mandatory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in England—Educators' Views on Children's Rights' Aoife Daly and Rachel Heah (2023) 'Mandatory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in England—Educators' Views on Children's Rights'. Child & Youth Services, [Details] | |
| (2023) | 'Intergenerational Rights are Children’s Rights: Upholding the Right of Children to a Healthy Environment' Aoife Daly (2023) 'Intergenerational Rights are Children’s Rights: Upholding the Right of Children to a Healthy Environment'. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 41 (3):132-154 [Details] | |
| (2022) | 'Climate competence: Youth climate activism and its impact on international human rights law' Daly, Aoife (2022) 'Climate competence: Youth climate activism and its impact on international human rights law'. Human Rights Law Review, 22 (2):1-24 [DOI] [Full Text] [Details] | |
| (2020) | 'Sexuality Education and International Standards: Insisting Upon Children’s Rights' Aoife Daly & Catherine O'Sullivan (2020) 'Sexuality Education and International Standards: Insisting Upon Children’s Rights'. Human Rights Quarterly, 42 :835-858 [Details] | |
| (2021) | 'Good Relations: Kinship Care in Liverpool, UK and the Views of Professionals on Human Rights' Aoife Daly (2021) 'Good Relations: Kinship Care in Liverpool, UK and the Views of Professionals on Human Rights'. Journal of Human Rights Practice, 13 (1) [Details] | |
| (2020) | 'Sexuality Education and International Standards: Insisting Upon Children's Rights' Aoife Daly and Catherine O'Sullivan (2020) 'Sexuality Education and International Standards: Insisting Upon Children's Rights'. Human Rights Quarterly, 42 (4) [Details] | |
| (2020) | 'Assessing Children’s Capacity: Reconceptualising our Understanding through the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child' Daly, A (2020) 'Assessing Children’s Capacity: Reconceptualising our Understanding through the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child'. International Journal of Children's Rights, 28 (3) [DOI] [Full Text] [Details] | |
| (2019) | 'Vulnerable Subjects and Autonomous Actors: Children with Disabilities and the Right to Sex Education' Aoife Daly, Kirsty Liddiard and Rachel Heah (2019) 'Vulnerable Subjects and Autonomous Actors: Children with Disabilities and the Right to Sex Education'. Childhood: Global Journal of Child Research, 9 [Details] | |
| (2018) | 'No Weight for ‘Due Weight’? A Children’s Autonomy Principle in Best Interest Proceedings' Aoife Daly (2018) 'No Weight for ‘Due Weight’? A Children’s Autonomy Principle in Best Interest Proceedings'. International Journal of Children's Rights, 26 [Details] | |
| (2011) | 'The Right of Children to be Heard and the Emerging Law of the European Convention on Human Rights' Aoife Daly (2011) 'The Right of Children to be Heard and the Emerging Law of the European Convention on Human Rights'. The International Journal of Human Rights, [Details] |
Published Reports
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| (2022) | White Paper on the Right of the Child to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment. With Tigre et al. (2022) White Paper on the Right of the Child to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment. Global Network of Human Rights and the Environment, London. [Details] | |
| (2018) | Enhancing the Status of UN Treaty Rights in Domestic Settings. Aoife Daly, Yvonne McDermott and Joshua Curtis (2018) Enhancing the Status of UN Treaty Rights in Domestic Settings. University of Liverpool, Online. [Details] | |
| (2016) | Challenges to children's rights today: what do children think. Aoife Daly, Sandy Ruxton and Mieke Schuurman (2016) Challenges to children's rights today: what do children think. Council of Europe, Strasbourg. [DOI] [Details] |
Articles
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| (2024) | Child and Youth Friendly Justice for the Climate Crisis: Relying on the CRC -forthcoming, under review . Aoife Daly (2024) Child and Youth Friendly Justice for the Climate Crisis: Relying on the CRC -forthcoming, under review . Articles [Details] | |
| (2022) | 'The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 2 and Discrimination on the Basis of Childhood: The CRC Paradox?' In Nordic Journal of International Law. Aoife Daly, Rebecca Thorburn Stern and Pernilla Leviner (2022) 'The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 2 and Discrimination on the Basis of Childhood: The CRC Paradox?' In Nordic Journal of International Law. Articles [Details] | |
| (2013) | Demonstrating Positive Obligations: Children's Rights and Peaceful Protest in International Law George Washington International Law Review, Vol. 45, No. 4, 2013. Aoife Daly (2013) Demonstrating Positive Obligations: Children's Rights and Peaceful Protest in International Law George Washington International Law Review, Vol. 45, No. 4, 2013. Articles [Details] |
Electronic Article
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| (2022) | “Climate crisis: how states may be held responsible for impact on children” The Conversation. Aoife Daly (2022) “Climate crisis: how states may be held responsible for impact on children” The Conversation. Electronic Article [Details] | |
| (2021) | How children are taking European states to court over the climate crisis – and changing the law (The Conversation). Aoife Daly, Rebecca Stern and Pernilla Leviner (2021) How children are taking European states to court over the climate crisis – and changing the law (The Conversation). Electronic Article [Details] | |
| (2021) | “COVID vaccines for under-16s: why competent children in the UK can legally decide for themselves” The Conversation. Helen Stalford, Aoife Daly and Kerry Barry. (2021) “COVID vaccines for under-16s: why competent children in the UK can legally decide for themselves” The Conversation. Electronic Article [Details] | |
| (2020) | 'It is time to accept that children have a right to be political' Discover Society. Aoife Daly (2020) 'It is time to accept that children have a right to be political' Discover Society. Electronic Article [Details] |
Unpublished Reports
| Year | Publication | |
|---|---|---|
| (2022) | Children's rights and climate justice. Aoife Daly and Laura Lundy (2022) Children's rights and climate justice. Strasbourg: Unpublished Reports [Details] |
Professional Activities
Honours and Awards
| Year | Title | Awarding Body | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Researcher of the Year | College of Law and Business | |
| 2021 | Teaching Hero Award | The National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and the Union of Students in Ireland | |
| 2021 | President's Award for Excellence in Teaching | University College Cork |
Journal Activities
| Journal | Role | To / From | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Human Rights Law Review | Member of Editorial Board | - |