The Duty to Testify: Children's Voice in Justice

Sor Juana wrote her own testimony—her intellectual autobiography, her defense of her right to study theology—asserting that her voice and experience were valid evidence against institutional claims about women's capacities. For children's rights, this means recognizing that children possess knowledge about their own lives and the systems affecting them, and that justice requires listening to their testimony. Too often, children are silenced, disbelieved, or their accounts are filtered through adult interpretation. Sor Juana's insistence on speaking for herself models how children must be empowered to articulate their own experiences of harm, discrimination, neglect, or injustice. Children's rights frameworks must create safe, credible mechanisms for children to testify about abuse, unfair treatment, and systemic failures. This requires believing children, protecting them from retaliation, and treating their accounts as essential evidence rather than emotional expression to be managed. When children's voices are centered as testimony, institutions become accountable. Sor Juana's self-advocacy demonstrates that children deserve platforms to speak their truth and the assurance that the world will listen.