Rector’s Seminar delivered by visiting Fellow Dr Espejo-Yaksic

At the end of November guests online and in person at the FitzHugh Auditorium in Cohen Quad were treated to a magnificent educational experience when visiting Fellow Dr Nicolás Espejo-Yaksic gave his talk on Child Safeguarding. You could argue we could find no one better to give such a talk; Dr Espejo-Yaksic is a permanent advisor to the United Nations in the field of children’s rights and has supported UNICEF in Chile, Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru and Mexico.

He discussed the importance of private organisations having child safeguarding policies in sectors such as social media, investment and sports, however, their downfall is the reliance on their own self-regulatory powers. A lot of work needs to be done to make it a matter of International Human Rights Law, and the responsibility of all – private or public, to ensure child safety.

This ‘polycentric approach’ also involves the discussion of child safeguarding with the children themselves – currently, their views and opinions on where they feel safe, what makes them uncomfortable etc, are missing from a lot of procedures and protocols, which, Dr Espejo-Yaksic points out, seems illogical. Having a policy to deal with child safeguarding retrospectively is not enough – more work needs to be done to ensure prevention and having suitable procedures in place.

Listen to his thought-provoking and entertaining talk on an often difficult subject matter below, or on the Exeter YouTube channel.