Advocating for the Rights of Children: Katie Burke’s Path to Human Rights Change

Master of Human Rights alum Katie Burke has always been an advocate. As a young teenager growing up in Scotland, she was involved in the Scottish Youth Parliament, first as a member, and then eventually as a vice chairperson and chairperson. In her youth roles, Burke became heavily involved in the advocacy campaign in Scotland to lower the voting age to 16, which was eventually successful. In the run up to Scotland’s Independence Referendum in 2014, she and her fellow youth parliamentarians took on the responsibility of registering young people all around the country to vote, and went on to represent Scotland at the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child’s examination of the United Kingdom, and sit as the sole youth representative on the Scottish Parliament’s Commission for Parliamentary Reform which changed the structures and systems of the country’s Parliament. In recognition of her work, she was named as one of the 30 under 30 most inspiring Scots women in 2016.

These experiences were foundational to shaping her career path. “I was very lucky to get first-hand experience of the power of advocacy and the power of being able to make a difference at a really young age,” says Burke. “I think when you've been involved in something as momentous as the push for ‘Votes at 16’ in Scotland, those direct experiences of seeing change happen are rare. And so, I kind of got the bug really early on.”

From Scotland to the University of Minnesota

After completing her undergraduate studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in International Relations, Katie Burke came to the United States as a Fulbright Scholar, where she was drawn to the Masters of Human Rights (MHR) degree program for its interdisciplinary nature and tight-knit community. She also was drawn to Minnesota’s reputation as a hub of global human rights human rights leadership. The MHR program allowed her to gain practical advocacy skills: “A lot of it was trying to work out that there's this academic concept of human rights and the theoretical and legal underpinning, but how do we see that come to life for people - the question in my mind was always what does this look like in reality,” Burke shares.

Burke designed her own degree concentration in women and children’s rights. Drawing on her experiences in youth participation and child rights advocacy, Burke knew from the beginning that she wanted to direct her coursework around the rights of the child. She took classes in public policy, international law, global studies, and even took on some self-study modules. One of her most memorable experiences was writing a legal paper about the history of children’s testimonies as evidence in international criminal judicial proceedings following situations of genocide, tracing the history of children’s testimony from the Nuremberg Tribunals through to more recent cases before the International Criminal Court.

Becoming a Child Policy Advocate

Following her time in the MHR program, Burke started graduate employment as an International Research Assistant at the United Kingdom based charity, Coram International, where she was a qualitative research consultant for UNICEF, the EU and other INGOs. Burke worked on issues of child protection, child justice, and children affected by migration and specialized in child participation and ensuring children’s lived experiences were at the center of the organization's research. During her almost five years in this role, Burke was promoted over time to Senior Research and Child Protection Officer and worked in over 20 countries to conduct qualitative and interview-based research on child protection and justice systems around the world, from Papua New Guinea to Sierra Leone. Her publications include UNICEF HQ’s landmark guide ‘Legislating for the Digital Age’ and a range of research and evaluations including co-authoring UNICEF’s ‘Regional Situation Analysis on Children Affected by Migration in ASEAN Member States’. She credits the MHR program for giving her the methodological foundation necessary to do this work.

Burke interviewed countless children in doing this work, which she said opened her eyes to a myriad of ethical concerns and obligations she hadn’t previously encountered in her advocacy experience. “Research ethics when doing international research is also really nuanced and really interesting,” says Burke. “The foundation of all research is ‘do no harm,’ so we spent a lot of time thinking about research tools, thinking about whether we really needed to ask direct questions about children's experiences of harm, particularly in contexts where children’s disclosures may result in further institutional harms. I think nothing is as straightforward as it was when I learned it in a book.”

Now, Burke works as the Policy Manager at WeProtect Global Alliance, the largest global coalition working against technology-facilitated child sexual abuse and exploitation. In this role, Burke is working at the front line of policy work on new and emerging harms to children as the digital world continues to expand and the forms of harm children can experience online grow with the advent of AI. Her day-to-day work consists of analyzing current and upcoming legislation globally around children’s online safety, sitting as an Observer to the Lanzarote Committee and the Global Online Safety Regulators Network, convening a 24-Government strong Global Taskforce around this issue, and speaking at international events around key developments from artificial intelligence technologies to countries planning social media bans and delay.

In her work, she hopes to continue to develop and advocate for systems that help governments and the private sector prevent harm and better protect the rights of children online, and ideating ways to push this legislation forward. From being a child advocate herself, to advocating for children in her career, Burke shows that we can practice human rights advocacy at any age.