Louise Thivant

Human rights, multi-stakeholder partnerships & quality assurance

Louise Thivant-Johannsen is a driven international human rights lawyer with over two decades experience in reinforcing international human rights, achieving concrete and measurable results in various development and humanitarian contexts. As the founder of CYFGP, Louise manages strategic partnerships and oversees quality assurance. Louise played a key role in the transformation and revitalization of UNICEF’s Child Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI), a global programme designed to help local governments strengthen child rights implementation in over 50 countries. Louise’s background includes extensive work in human rights programming and policy development for both the Danish and British governments, the Red Cross and the NGOs Dignity and The Centre for Transitional Justice, contributing to various UN, inter-governmental, and CSO processes. Throughout her career, Louise has remained committed to inclusive methodologies, particularly focusing on marginalized and vulnerable children and adolescents. Louise has successfully led multiple multi-stakeholder and co-creation consultations with children and young people, including contributing to the development of the EU Child Rights Strategy, and ensuring that children and young people inform policy developments on online safety.

Kavita Ratna

Child Rights, adolescent participation & governance

Kavita Ratna is a children's rights advocate with close to four decades of work experience ranging from grassroot interventions to global policy engagements. She is the former Executive Director of Concerned for Working Children (CWC), an organization thrice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (2012, 2013, 2014) for its contribution to the praxis of children's right to participation and agency. She facilitates meaningful participation of a wide range of vulnerable young people at local, national, regional, and international levels. She has worked extensively to enable children's citizenship in urban and rural settings in India. She has built capacities of civil society organisations and officials to create child and youth friendly communities in India, Nepal, Srilanka, Mongolia, Norway, England, the Bahamas, Uganda and Zambia. She has also served on several UN Expert Group Committees contributing to the UN General Comments on Children's Right to Participation; Rights of Adolescents and Rights of Children in Street Situations. Additionally, she has provided technical expertise to the Commonwealth and UNICEF ROSA on child responsive governance as well as adolescent engagement in claiming citizenship & involvement in mainstream governance.

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Bruce Adamson

International law, institutional reform & impact assessment

Bruce Adamson was the Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland from 2017 to 2023. Working directly with children, his office helped secure legislative changes related to the age of criminal responsibility, the physical punishment of children, the ending of imprisonment of children, and the incorporation of the CRC into Scots law. Bruce is a lawyer with over 25 years of experience, qualified in three jurisdictions. He was a member of Scotland’s Children’s Panel for 13 years, making decisions regarding care and protection as well as conflict with the law. He has worked as a human rights expert in over 20 countries for the UN, Council of Europe, EU, OSCE, and UNDP, and was an advisor to the WHO on children's rights during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is a former Chair of the European Network of Ombuds for Children and the Scottish Child Law Centre. From 2023 to 2024, he was a Professor in Practice at the University of Glasgow School of Law. Bruce is currently the Vice Chair of the Child and Youth Friendly Governance Project, a board member of the Human Rights Consortium Scotland, and a fellow at Cattanach Trust, focusing on early years.

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Claire O’Kane

Child & youth participation, protection & climate action

Claire O’Kane is a qualified social worker and an experienced practitioner and researcher in children’s rights, child/ adolescent/ youth participation and civic engagement, care, protection, and climate justice. She has a Masters in Applied Social Studies and a Post-graduate diploma in Social Research and Evaluation. Claire is an expert in facilitating and mentoring ethical, child friendly participatory strategies, research, evaluations, programming, and governance with particular expertise in collaborating with children and adolescents facing structural discrimination. She has 30 years of international experience working across the triple nexus of development, humanitarian and peacebuilding in diverse geo-political contexts in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Claire has authored over 100 publications on child rights, participation, civic engagement, protection, care, governance, accountability, ethics, social justice and climate justice. She is the author of UNICEF’s guidance “Engaged and Heard! Guidelines on adolescent participation and civic engagement; and the Save the Children (& other agencies) Toolkit for monitoring and evaluating children’s participation.

Paola Bernal Fuentes

Social policy, Child Friendly Cities, Monitoring & Evaluation

Paola Bernal Fuentes is a child rights and social policy specialist with over 20 years' experience working in diverse contexts, including Colombia and Spain, with a strong focus on child friendly cities, local governance, child protection and inclusive development, experience that has strengthened her intercultural and community engagement skills.
Since 2015, Paola has led UNICEF Spain’s Child Friendly Cities Initiative, overseeing its strategic growth to over 340 recognized municipalities. Her work integrates children's rights into local policy through capacity-building, advocacy, and innovation. She has coordinated national congresses, authored or directed key publications on subjects as child protection, local action planning, and budgeting, and managed high-impact projects.
Her expertise combines strategic planning, stakeholder coordination, and applied research. She has worked closely with policy makers, universities, NGO´s and grassroots organizations to promote child-friendly governance, inclusive development and evidence-based policy. Paola holds advanced degrees in economics, international development, nonprofit management, and innovation methodologies. Her work is defined by a commitment to equity, participation, and the protection of children’s rights in diverse and complex contexts.

Diarra Diop

Child Rights Mainstreaming, gender equality & advocacy

Diarra Diop is a human rights advocate with 14 years of experience advancing children’s rights, gender equality, and social justice, with research and policy expertise across EU and UN institutions. For over a decade, she has driven Save the Children’s global advocacy and policy engagement on child rights with UN bodies in Geneva, integrating child rights and children’s voices and perspectives into key intergovernmental platforms, UN human rights mandates, policy guidance and migration policy agreements.
Diarra’s expertise spans cross-thematic strategy development, capacity-building that links local and global advocacy, child rights-based programming, and multi-stakeholder coordination. She is passionate about accountability, meaningful child participation, and systemic change, and has worked closely with policymakers, universities, UN entities, and civil society coalitions worldwide. Through her efforts, she has helped shape global standards on child protection, migration, climate justice, and civic space, while institutionalizing spaces for children’s meaningful engagement in UN policy fora and decisions.

Alvin is a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) specialist with over 12 years of professional experience, primarily within the United Nations system. He has led and conducted global-level thematic evaluations for UNICEF HQ as well as programme-level evaluations for UNICEF and other UN agencies.

In addition to evaluation, Alvin has carried out situation analyses (e.g., on the rights of persons with disabilities), supported country offices in developing monitoring frameworks, provided technical guidance to the Child-Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI), and documented child rights initiatives such as the European Child Guarantee. He is recognised for applying a child-rights-based approach and for fostering strong collaboration with UNICEF and UN agency teams worldwide.

Alvin holds a Ph.D. in Education and an M.Phil. in Education and Development from the University of Cambridge. A certified teacher and former journalist, he brings a multidisciplinary perspective to his work. As a consultant, he has broadened his expertise beyond education to encompass child participation, skills development, disability inclusion, and social protection — all grounded in a firm commitment to human rights and child rights.

Roxane Yasmine Khedoud

Capacity building, civic engagement & inclusion

Reetta Mikkola

Child participation & safeguarding

Reetta Mikkola is a social scientist specialized in child rights, child and youth participation, child safeguarding, and impactful communication. Reetta has experience in programme delivery, monitoring, and safeguarding. Previously, she spent five years with UNICEF, focusing on youth engagement, advocacy, and communication, and coordinating many major consultation processes with children. In her current role at the Child and Youth Friendly Governance Project, she is in charge of programme and project management, child safeguarding, and child and youth participation programmes, with a focus on ensuring children’s meaningful and ebective engagement.

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Katie Reid

Child & youth participation in climate & environmental justice

Katie Reid is a child rights specialist with a focus on children and youth participation in governance, deliberative democracy, and climate/environmental justice initiatives. Her expertise centers on facilitating intergenerational dialogue and ensuring children and young people meaningfully contribute to policy development.
Her work has included leading the child participation process for Scotland's Climate Assembly, notably the first citizens' assembly to directly involve children, and collaborating on the design and delivery of the Children and Young People’s Biodiversity Loss Assembly in Ireland. Katie was also the child participation focal point for the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child's steering group for the development of its General Comment No. 26. Working with 12 Child Advisors, this involved co-designing a global participation process that gathered over 16,300 contributions from children across 121 countries, developing the child-friendly versions, and coordinating the global launch activities.
Katie holds an MSc in Childhood Studies and an MA (with Honours) in Social Anthropology and Sustainable Development from the University of Edinburgh.

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Karen Scott

Child safeguarding including child online protection

Karen is a child rights and safety specialist and has dedicated her career to promoting the best interests of children and their protection from harm. As the Head of Safeguarding for the LEGO Group, Karen led the development and implementation of safeguarding strategy, policy and processes across the business. She drove meaningful culture change, including building safeguarding capacity and expertise, to create safer environments for children and young people in the offline and online world. Karen was the senior escalation point for all safeguarding incidents, including the response to digital child safety risks. She is an expert in assessing and mitigating risks and communicating complex safeguarding issues in an understandable way. Karen was also the Child Participation lead at the LEGO Group, and designed training, principles and procedures to equip the business to co-design with children in a safe and meaningful way. She is a passionate advocate for promoting children’s rights and agency in both physical and digital spaces.
Previously, Karen was a Partnerships Lead at the National Crime Agency and successfully engaged high-level stakeholders, building influential collaborations and winning support for international safeguarding initiatives in both the corporate sector and civil society. She also supported in the early-stage development of the Online Safety Act as part of a Home Office taskforce.
Karen holds a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Edinburgh, and brings operational experience gained from her time as a front-line child protection social worker in London, grounding her practice in both lived realities and systemic change.

Zoë Speekenbrink is a specialist in child rights and migration with over 17 years of experience, with a focus on advocating for the rights, safeguarding and participation of displaced children. With a career rooted in direct work with unaccompanied forced migrant children including as child anti-trabicking advocate (2011-2015) Zoë has worked with major organizations like UNICEF UK (2018-2021), Save the Children UK (2009 – 2010) and the British Red Cross (2009 –2010), as well as grassroots NGOs. Zoë’s work spans direct support, research, advocacy, and project management focused on children’s rights, forced migration and social change. She has extensive experience in training professionals in child rights, engagement and participation; embedding children's rights in policy, and fostering inclusive youth participation.
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Zoe Speekenbrink

Child rights, migration, displacement & Inclusion

Tayma Abdalhadi

Digital transformation
& youth engagement

Tayma Abdalhadi is a digital transformation and youth engagement specialist based in Palestine. She combines expertise in human-centred digital innovation, e-governance and youth participation, supporting governments, UN agencies, civil society organisations and grassroots initiatives to design accessible and inclusive digital solutions. Tayma has represented young people in international policy processes, including as an ITU Generation Connect Arab Youth Envoy, contributing to global discussions on digital inclusion, child online safety and youth participation in technology governance. Her work focuses on ensuring that digital technologies are designed with and for young people, promoting meaningful participation, accessibility and rights-based digital governance.

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