Children often face discrimination, bullying and even violence because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, as do children raised by parents who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). This article considers what the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is doing to protect the rights of LGBT children and children with LGBT parents. To make such an assessment, this article critically analyses the Committee’s Concluding Observations over a 10-year period, its General Comments and its Views on Individual Communications. The conclusion reached is that while the Committee has made encouraging progress in recent years when it comes to addressing LGBT related issues, there is still room for improvement in the way the Committee seeks to protect children from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Athletes are not just sports people; they are certainly among the most prominent figures of their present time, playing an important role in shaping opinions with their power to inspire. For this very reason, athletes’ freedom of expression is strongly limited by the sport authorities in light of the fundamental principle of sport neutrality. This study analyses and questions the traditional constraints to athletes’ free speech by taking into consideration the role of human rights in sports legal order and in sporting affairs. By assuming an emerging relativization of sport political neutrality, the essay investigates the case-law concerning athletes’ freedom of expression identifying limits and perspectives of the current evolutions on athletes’ public statements, establishing to what extent a reform of the present sporting regulation on freedom of expression is needed.

Infrastructure projects, including roads, railways, power, telecommunications and water facilities, are considered necessary to promote many different human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Infrastructure development has been a central feature of the Myanmar government’s policies, including the Myanmar Sustainable Development Plan 2018–2030, to sustain economic growth and achieve the SDGs. As in many countries, public–private partnerships are promoted to help implement these policies. Yet, infrastructure projects have been associated with serious human rights violations, including in Myanmar. This article explores the links between infrastructure, international human rights law and the SDGs. It analyses how this relationship is governed by international, domestic, ‘soft’ law and self-regulatory mechanisms. It then assesses Myanmar’s legal and policy framework for promoting infrastructure investment and implementing the SDGs. It concludes that there is scope to further clarify responsibilities and accountability mechanisms for the human rights impacts of infrastructure investment.

Article 31(1) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) provides all children, everywhere, with the right to play. The CRC is the most widely ratified international human rights treaty, yet children’s right to play is considered ‘the forgotten right’. The widespread State inaction to fulfil this right could be partly due to continued uncertainty about how to define play. This Article argues for the application a large body of recent research with the group most qualified to determine whether activities are play or not: young children. This research demonstrates that choice and autonomy are two universal and essential indicia for an activity to be experienced as play. The Article contends that the fulfilment of young children’s right to play would significantly increase if early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions within States utilised these two indicia within daily programmed activities and in ECEC policies.