Children's Rights

In 1924 the League of Nations adopted a Declaration of the Rights of the Child. It was not legally binding, but set forth principles that marked a shift in legal and cultural understandings of children. Children in many societies had, for centuries, been viewed as little more than their fathers' property. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, long working hours under hazardous conditions were the lot of millions of children in industrializing nations. Problems of domestic physical, sexual, or psychological child abuse were absent from public discussion.

Since the 1950s children's rights have attracted greater attention. In 1959 a second Declaration of the Rights of the Child was adopted, this time by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. Like the 1924 Declaration, it was not legally binding, but was more detailed in content, signaling further recognition of children as rights holders under international law. In 1989, the General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention is a full-fledged treaty; once a state formally becomes a party to it, that state is

bound by its provisions. As of 2004 over 190 states had become parties to the Convention. A handful of others, notably the United States, have signed the Convention, thus endorsing its general aims, but have not taken the further step of becoming parties to it. That reluctance need not leave children in such countries without rights. The United States, for example, has any number of domestic laws and procedures protecting children (much of it at state and local levels), although many activists believe that further progress could be made. The countries with the best records of protecting children have done so largely through their own internal legal systems, without great reliance upon, or pressure from, international organizations. The 1924 and 1959 Declarations and the 1989 Convention nevertheless provide useful barometers of changing attitudes in many countries.

Other international documents set forth children's rights in more specific situations, such as armed conflict, juvenile detention, work, or education. Taken as a whole, such documents form a detailed corpus of rights. Once those rights have been recognized widely enough to become part of general, or customary, international law, they may be found to be binding even upon states that are not parties to the Convention. In the view of some experts, the high number of nation states endorsing children's rights documents supports the view that rules protecting children's core needs can now be considered part of customary international law.

Such developments are encouraging, yet millions of children on all continents continue to suffer brutality, slavery, poverty, malnutrition, disease, forced prostitution, genital mutilation, honor killings, poor education, and physical and emotional abuse. The 1989 Convention established a Committee on the Rights of the Child, charged with monitoring the progress made by parties to the Convention. The Committee has published candid criticisms of state violations. However, it can do little more. It has no judicial power. There is no court, police force, or prison to prevent or punish violations. Even in its limited function of issuing reports on state progress, the Committee can expect little cooperation from many offending nations. As with human rights law generally, offending states often adhere to norms on paper out of sheer political expediency, and not through any deep respect for human rights. Some states cite findings against them as grounds for insisting on greater development aid, arguing that violations can only be stopped when the overall level of wealth in society attains a satisfactory level. Children's rights then become tools in a broader political struggle, rather than ends in themselves.

Children's rights gather together a variety of problems that, in other branches of human rights law, are sometimes treated separately. "Classic" human rights, rooted in an older Western liberal tradition, include rights such as free expression, freedom of religion, due process of law, equal protection, and freedom from torture or cruel or degrading treatment. Those civil rights and liberties are commonly distinguished from more recent concepts of social and economic rights, such as rights to minimum levels of food, shelter, clothing, health care or education. Even for adults, particularly those living in poverty, distinctions between those two sets of rights can seem unjustified. For children, any distinction between those two classes of rights becomes all the more questionable. Rights to economic development, or rights of equitable access to natural resources, have been proposed to address such problems, but raise political and economic controversies of their own.

In order to meet such pressing concerns, international documents governing the rights of the child might have been cast as minimal statements, limited to the concerns of the neediest children. In fact, just the opposite has occurred. The 1989 Convention seeks to guarantee individual freedom, autonomy and personal development for all children. That ambition raises further problems. Article 13(1), for example, guarantees freedom of expression to every child, which is defined to "include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice." The Convention makes clear that such rights may not extend to children as fully as they extend to adults, and that the views of parents and guardians must also be taken into account. Nevertheless, there are many societies in which even adults enjoy little freedom of expression. In view of cross-cultural differences in attitudes toward children, it is difficult to guess how much freedom such a norm can guarantee.

Beyond the specific provisions of the Convention, more general questions arise about the vision of the child that it assumes. For example, research has pointed to issues of sexual identity as particularly thorny ones for human rights. Sexual identity is widely seen as having vast implications for individual development. Violence, repression, or ostracism arising from a minority sexual identity can have devastating, sometimes homicidal or suicidal, consequences for children. Much of the scientific community believes that certain core foundations of sexual identity are either inborn or fixed at a young age. Those facts would suggest that minority sexual identities should be protected, yet many states and cultures continue to voice fierce opposition to all attempts to promote greater acceptance. Activists find themselves torn between risking the gains already made for children's rights by losing credibility with offending states, and overlooking children who may need protection.

Children's rights are difficult to separate from women's rights, as women continue to be primary caretakers. Where women's rights are not respected, their children's rights may also be at risk. In some instances, the entire arena of family law comes into play. Domestic violence or collapse, including parental separation or divorce, involves the rights of parents as well as of children, yet children's best interests are notoriously difficult to promote in such circumstances.

The twentieth century witnessed undeniable changes in attitudes toward children, including a willingness to treat them as individuals worthy of basic freedoms and opportunities. At the same time, war, poverty, social upheaval, mass migrations, and the problems of industrialization have continued to claim children as their victims. It is unlikely that children's lives will show improvement until their broader social, political and economic problems can be addressed.

See also: Women's Rights.

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Eric Heinze