Professor Ann Skelton has been elected as Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. She is a Professor in the University of Pretoria’s Department of Private Law.

The 18 member committee is made up of independent experts from around the world. It holds three sessions a year in Geneva, where it receives reports from States on their progress towards compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. She was originally nominated by South Africa to serve on this body, and was voted into by the United Nations for her first term of office May 2017. She is now in her sixth year on the Committee having been re-elected for a second term that ends in February 2025.

This Convention has been ratified by every country in the world, apart from the United States – but ironically, in early June this year Professor Skelton will head to New York to attend the meeting of all the Chairs of the United Nations Treaty Bodies.

Speaking from Geneva where the election by the members took place today (8 May 2023), Professor Skelton said: ‘The opportunity to lead the top global body on children’s rights is incredibly exciting, but comes with a weighty responsibility. Children’s rights are currently under threat in many parts of the world. Keeping States accountable for failures, and encouraging better efforts to improve children’s lives is the daily bread of the Committee. I look forward to an energetic two years in which the Committee will deepen its efforts to bring about the needed change on the ground’.

Professor Skelton is well known in South Africa and internationally as a children's rights lawyer. She has argued many landmark child rights cases in the South Africa Constitutional Court.

She is a highly rated research with a B1 rating from the National Research Foundation, is a member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. She holds the UNESCO Chair in Education Law in Africa.