• Childrensworld

The World's Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child (WCPRC) is based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The WCPRC strengthens the voices of children and young people, promotes their humanitarian growth as global citizens, and helps them to demand respect for the rights of the child.

Students from all over the world work with the WCPRC, which is the world's largest annual education and empowerment process for the rights of the child, democracy, the environment and global friendship. As part of this process, the children award the world's most-respected prizes for the rights of the child. The prize sum is used to give a better life to some of the world's most disadvantaged children.

Young people work with the WCPRC with the help of The Globe magazine and childrensworld.org. There they meet the prize candidates, the jury children and global friends. The Globe is published in nine languages and the website is published in 10 languages.

The Global Vote
52,167 schools with nearly 23 million students in 99 countries support the WCPRC as Global Friends. All students at these schools have the right to vote in the Global Vote, as long as they are under 18. The Global Vote decides who should receive one of the main prizes, the Global Friends' Award. In 2008, almost 6.6 million young people voted in the Global Vote.

The World's Children's Prize
The other main prize, the World's Children's Prize, is awarded by an international child jury. The children of the jury are experts on the rights of the child, through their own life experience. The jury includes children who have been soldiers, slaves, refugees, street children, been forced into prostitution, or who have had their rights violated in other ways. The children of the jury also fight for the rights of the child. The jury children represent all the children in the world who share their experiences. Millions of children all over the world learn about different aspects of the rights of the child by reading the jury children's stories.

The prize candidates
Every year, three finalists are chosen by the child jury's prize committee, which consists of five of the jury children. The finalist who does not receive the World's Children's Prize or the Global Friends' Award receives the World's Children's Honorary Award.

The prize sum
The prize sum for 2008 is 150,000 US dollars. AstraZeneca, Abraxis BioScience and Banco Fonder all contribute to the prize money. All three prize candidates receive money for their work for the rights of the child.

Adult Friends
Adults – organisations, companies and individuals – can support the WCPRC as Adult Friends, and have the right to nominate prize candidates. There are currently 405 Adult Friend organisations, including, local and national education departments, companies and media projects for young people.
Some adults are patrons and Honorary Adult Friends of the prize. These include Queen Silvia of Sweden; Nelson Mandela, South Africa; President and Nobel Peace Laureate José Ramos Horta, East Timor; Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão, East Timor; Nobel Economics Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, USA; former Executive Director of Unicef Carol Bellamy; former UN Under-Secretary-General for children and armed conflict, currently the first World's Children's Ombudsman, Olara Otunnu; most-read living philosopher Ken Wilber; and supermodel Alek Wek.

Open to all
The WCPRC was founded by Swedish organisation Children's World, but it is open to all schools and organisations all over the world.