An interesting move for an Irish NGO – or indeed a large umbrella body of NGO’s. The Children’s Right’s Alliance have launched a series of podcasts. The first podcast marks the 15th Anniversary of Ireland’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – a convention the state constantly fail on. It’s a year since the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child issued their report on Irish children’s rights and the states many failings.

Some of the founders of the alliance speak on the podcast about the campaigns for children’s rights and how they developed following the adoption of the convention and that Ireland had to report on how it was meeting it’s obligations and the state’s report needed to be shadowed – and so the alliance was formed.

All of this is a very interesting build up before the proposed referendum on children’s rights proposed for next year. More information on the issues here, a photo of the Minister for Children getting his copy of the podcast here (on a CD-Rom no less!), and the rss feed for the podcast is here.

For those of us with disabilities it is interesting to learn about Irish action regarding UN documentation and machinery – given Ireland’s recent adoption of the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The use of podcasts for communicating and analysing messages by Irish NGO’s is new and very welcome. Information is needed though for the many on what a podcast is and the fact one does not need an ipod to listen and that you should be able to just click and listen – a link to the mp3 file would have been useful for example.