Children’s Rights Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Children’s rights have become enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Adopted in 1989, this declaration sought both to establish a concept of rights specific to children (ages seventeen and under) and to elaborate on that concept with regard to the specific rights that should be conferred on children by the state or society in which they live.

Although the principles underpinning these rights, and the specification of some of them, have been strongly contested at times, the UNCRC has nevertheless been adopted by most nations—only the United States and Somalia have not yet ratified the convention—and the UNCRC has acquired force through legislative expression in a number of countries. The United States is opposed to the convention because it fears that ratification could weaken national sovereignty and override parental rights. The points of contestation have emerged out of different cultural values, with some criticism that the UNCRC promulgates a Western, universal conceptualization of the child and of the place of the child in society. Further criticism orientates to a tension within the set of rights as established between protectionist and liberationist approaches to the matter of child rights. Finally, challenges stem from whether children need a specific set of rights or whether they should simply have extended to them the same human and civil rights to which adults can lay claim under the processes of the European Court of Human Rights and other supranational juridical institutions.

The specific provision for children reflects a duality of constructions: on the one hand, children as individual citizens with all the protections that brings, and on the other hand, children as dependents with the implications that carries for children’s relationship to adults and to the state. The UNCRC has moved forward from the highly protectionist provisions of earlier formulations for children’s rights such as that contained in the League of Nations in 1924 and the United Nations in 1959. A general characterization of the current UNCRC is that it addresses child rights in terms of the “3 Ps”—protection, participation, and provision. Under the protection rubric, children are assigned rights to protection from various harms that can be enacted by the state or which the state may fail to prevent (e.g., a right to freedom from violence and from abuse).What can be brought to the fore here is the approach of the “new” childhood studies and its view of the agency of the child in all dimensions of life against the “old” view dealing with the subordination of the child under parental interests. The provision rubric draws together those aspects of a child’s life that are essential for a decent life: the right to health care, education, and a home. Finally, rights that relate to participation are those that seek to enable children’s voices to be heard in processes of decision making and democratic participation. This new renationalization of protection, provision, and participation reflects the move from the socialization paradigm in childhood research to the new childhood studies in which the child is repositioned as a social actor and not as parents’ property.

Consideration of the rights of children is highly relevant to questions concerning political socialization and political education, the theory and practice of democracy, and the politics of childhood. The UNCRC invites thoughts about the exercise of democracy not as something to be acquired at an age of majority but as something to be interwoven throughout the life worlds of all citizens across their lifetimes. Consequently, questions of how people become political, and are political, need to set aside assumptions of an apolitical status in childhood. This links to the issue of childhood politics. Childhood is itself a political construction and a political arena, and therefore a contested terrain. A rights perspective demands that children be afforded space, within that construction and arena, to be visible and heard by those with the power to affect daily and national life. Finally, the notion of political education then becomes one of education for political participation, not about democracy as a process reserved for adult engagement only.

Bibliography:

Du Bois-Reymond Manuela, Heinz Sünker, and Heinz-Hermann Krüger, eds. Childhood in Europe: Approaches,Trends, Findings. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.
Hutchby, Ian, and Jo Moran-Ellis, eds. Children and Social Competence: Arenas of Action. London: Falmer Press, 1998.
James, Allison, and Alan Prout, eds. Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, 2nd ed. London: Falmer Press, 1999.
Moran-Ellis, Jo, and Heinz Sünker. “Giving Children a Voice: Childhood, Power, and Culture.” In Symbolic Power in Cultural Contexts: Uncovering Social Reality, edited by Jarmo Houtsonen and Ari Antikainen, 67–84. Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers, 2008.
Qvortrup, Jens, Marjatta Bardy, Giovanni Sgritta, and Helmut Wintersberger, eds. Childhood Matters: Social Theory, Practice and Politics. Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1994.