Just recently, I heard the very sad news that Lucy Smith had died.
Lucy was the member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) who acted as a rapporteur when the committee last examined the UK as a whole in 2008. She visited Wales and I had the pleasure of meeting with her in Geneva on a few occasions.
I came to very much respect Lucy for her knowledge, compassion and humour. She was good to be around and I will remember her as a friend to Wales. I learned a lot from her about the convention and how important it is to see the application of children's rights as a practical task, not an intellectual one. The intellectual rigour was there and Lucy used her abilities in this area really well, but only as a means to an end. I remember her saying to me: "A policy or new law is not the target; the target is making children's lives better than they are now."
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