Odete Severino Soares

Odete Severino Soares is a PhD candidate and Master of Law at NOVA School of Law, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa. She is an Associate Researcher at the NOVA Centre on the Rights of the Child Policy and a member of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Childhood and Adolescence at the University of the Azores.

She serves as Executive Coordinator of the Postgraduate Programme on Children’s Rights at NOVA School of Law (2025) and previously coordinated its first university extension course on children’s rights. She also delivers specialised training in this field.

Odete has over ten years’ experience as Head of Services at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation within the Portuguese Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security. In this role, she contributed as an expert to the Council of Europe, the United Nations, and the European Union on social policy, equality, human rights, and children’s rights.

She also served for four years as Vice-President of the Portuguese National Commission for the Promotion of the Rights and Protection of Children and Young People. She is a member of international networks including Eurochild and the Child-Friendly Justice European Network, as well as national organisations such as the Institute for Child Support.

Her work includes coordinating international projects on children’s rights, particularly in Portuguese-speaking African countries and Timor-Leste, and contributing to numerous publications. She is the author and co-author of several books on children’s rights.

She is also active in public discourse on children’s rights, including through podcasts and opinion platforms.