Children's Rights in Southeast Asia: Legal Development

Sherrie Brown, J.D., Ed.D. has been working on this project in various forms since 1988. It has been funded by has been funded by International Rescue Committee (IRC), World Vision International, United Nations Development Fund for Women, and Save the Children. Dr. Brown has worked in several countries in the region, but her primary focus has been on Cambodia.

Dr. Brown's first experience in curriculum development and teaching in Cambodia began when she and a colleague developed a curriculum taught to the Department of Psychology faculty at the Royal University of Phnom Penh in 1990-91. Later, in 1997, she was a legal consultant for the Cambodian Defenders Project (CDP) in Phnom Penh, and developed and taught a curriculum on women's rights and domestic violence. Since then, she has been working in Cambodia with lawyers at Legal Aid of Cambodia (LAC) on the development of a juvenile justice system and implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

This work has included developing CRC curriculum and teaching on children's rights, legal research and analysis. She completed a comparative law study: Cambodian Law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Comparative Study, published by Save the Children in 1998, which provided a thorough review of the standards of the CRC, Cambodian law, and recommendations for legal reform to bring Cambodia into compliance with the CRC obligations. In 2000, Dr. Brown and the LAC worked collaboratively to develop a handbook on the rights of juveniles in conflict with the law to be used in provincial training of judges, prosecutors, lawyers and police. In 2002, Dr. Brown conducted a survey on knowledge and interest in the implementation of an Ombudsman office for children in Cambodia and recommended steps towards completion of such an office. Her current work includes an update of the previously published books and reevaluation of the Ombudsman office.