Kirsten Sandberg elected to UN Committee on the Rights of the Child

Professor Kirsten Sandberg was elected to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child today. “I congratulate Ms Sandberg. We are proud that such a prominent representative of Norwegian research in the field of child law has been elected to a body that is so important for children’s rights,” said Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

Ms Sandberg is a professor at the Department of Public and International Law at the University of Oslo, and is currently Acting Supreme Court Justice. She is regarded as one of Norway’s foremost experts in child law, a field she has been working in since the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted in 1989.

Ms Sandberg received a majority of the votes in the first round of voting. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has 18 members, nine of whom are new members elected this year. Ms Sandberg’s candidature was supported by the other Nordic countries. The aim is that there should be a Nordic member in the Committee at all times. This has not been the case since Professor Lucy Smith’s (Norway) term expired in 2007 after she had been a member for eight years.