RIGHTS FOR CHILDREN: IT'S ORIGIN AND IMPORTANCE (original) (raw)
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Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Human Rights, 2024
There is wide agreement that children have human rights, and that their human rights differ from those of adults. What explains this difference which is, at least at first glance, puzzling, given that human rights are meant to be universal? The puzzle can be dispelled by identifying what unites children’s and adults’ rights as human rights. Here I seek to answer the question of children’s human rights – that is, rights they have merely in virtue of being human and of being children – by exploring how children’s interests are different from adults’, and how respect for children’s and adults’ moral status yields different practical requirements. If human rights protect interests, then children have many, but not all, of the human rights of adults, and, in addition, have some human rights that adults lack. I discuss the way in which children’s human rights, as I conceive of them here are, or fail to be, reflected in the law; as an illustration, I use the most important legal document listing children’s rights, namely the 1990 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (henceforth CRC).
2013
This article aims to reinvigorate the debate over the nature and value of the claim that children have children's rights. Whilst the language of rights and children's rights continues to be widely employed, and even relied upon, in many situations involving the legal regulation of children we lack strong child-centred evidence that it is better to regulate children through the lens of children's rights, rather than their 'best interests' or in terms of duties owed to them. My argument proceeds in four stages. Firstly, I distinguish between rights for children and children's rights. Understood in the sense of fundamental human rights, children are plainly rightsholders. The critical debate relates to children's rights. Secondly, I argue that the expressive and procedural reasons for affirming that children hold children's rights are contingent upon improved outcomes. Thirdly, I contend that we do not currently have a child-centred theory of children's rights that improves, or increases the likelihood of improved outcomes in legal practice. This is not a claim that children do not have children's rights. My argument critiques the current potential of both individual children's rights and a rights-based framework of reasoning to improve outcomes for children. Finally, I argue that without a theory of children's rights, we currently have no good evidence that it benefits children to think of them in terms of children's rights in law. This is an optimistic conclusion as it suggests that with greater attention on making decision-making truly childcentred, or explicitly recognizing the inability to do so, the purposes for which we want to believe that children have children's rights might be better achieved than they are at present.
Protecting the Human Rights of Children: From Standards Setting to Implementation
, 2014
This chapter argues that promoting children‘s wellbeing in practice requires a multidimensional approach that moves beyond exclusively legalistic children’s rights frameworks, and incorporates a broader understanding of children’s needs and priorities. In particular, I examine the research–policy–practice nexus in the area of children’s rights, and identify the main lessons learned by the various epistemic and praxis communities on specific aspects of the human rights of children.