Childhood's Today

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Childhood and Rights: Reflections on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Childhoods Today.Vol 2 (2):1-14.

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Childhood and Rights:

Reflections on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Catarina Toms1

Abstract:

This article focuses on the review of the main themes and issues that have appeared in

the literature on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) with regard to

debates about childrens rights in the context of globalisation.

Nearly two decades after its birth, it is necessary to carry out a detailed reflection on

and revision to the Convention, since the situation of childhood and of children in the

world has been overtaken by a number of problems, ambiguities and exclusions. This

convention is a normative and symbolic landmark connected with children's rights and

still requires a great deal of critical thinking.

Introduction

Childrens rights have been formally consecrated by means of changes

introduced into the legislation. The development of the discourse related to the

promotion of childrens rights has been a fact within social and political institutions, yet

we are very far from an ideal situation of respect for these rights. It is, nonetheless,

important to characterise the process of constitution of childrens rights, which led up to

the worldwide legal and normative model that exists today the Convention on the

Rights of the Child (henceforth referred to as CRC).

This article focuses on the reflections about the CRC associated with the process

of globalisation, namely in the promotion of two mechanisms: legislative harmonisation

and uniformisation, on the one hand, and standardisation regarding the worldwide

conception that children have rights, on the other. The article attempts to highlight the

need to discuss the CRC starting with the concept of childhood cosmopolitism. In other

words, approaching the issue from a down-top perspective using the contributions of

non-hegemonic actors and paradigms.

There is nowadays a widespread ongoing discussion over childrens rights. It is

not a recent discussion and thus it takes on a more complex form. This discussion turns

1Sociologist, Universidade da Beira Interior and LIBEC, University of Minho, Portugal

Email: [email protected]


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into a global question; however, it has to be carried out in a context which goes well

beyond the limits of neoliberal hegemonic globalisation. This view considers that our

societies are ruled by order and progress, and therefore need only consolidation.

Nevertheless, the search for social emancipation, through lawful means, is a counter-

hegemonic process and, for this reason, suffers from severe resistance.

Legislation protecting children had its beginning in the 19 th century, when the

child was the object of the first legal act which established the minimum age for working

in the coal mines (Mines Act, 1842). We may state that, in social and historical terms,

the discovery of childhood and its distancing from the world of adults became a

process of protection and promotion of its rights, especially in the 19 th and 20th

centuries. The questions that arise now are to know how we can characterise the 21 st

century in relation to childhood and children. Will this be the time for promotion and

guarantee of childrens rights? Will this period be one of construction of a new paradigm

which no longer considers childrens rights as extra rights (Leach 1994), that is, as

specific rights of a social group which are built at the expense of other rights?

These and other issues will the focus of further reflection.

Globalisation, Childhood and Rights

The globalisation of the themes associated with childhood resulted, mainly in the

80s of the 20th century, in a significant growth in international actions in favour of the

defence of childrens rights. This phenomenon has resulted in the multiplication of

NGOs, social movements, meetings and forums dedicated to childhood. The

collaboration between NGOs, governments and UNICEF, according to Pilotti (2001),

reinforces the confidence in the capacity of the international community to influence

governments through resolutions and recommendations, especially those that are

elaborated and approved at the United Nations.

There is now a transnational movement, even if emerging, fighting for childrens

rights, which is called childhood cosmopolitism (Toms and Soares, 2004; Toms,

2006). It is a form of counter-hegemonic globalisation, a project where various battles,

projects, actors, pluralities and diversities cohere, most of the time collaborating among

themselves, in the defence childrens rights. This is something which can be seen in the

role of and in different action plans undertaken by various organisations (UNICEF,

Childwatch International, International Save the Children Alliance, among others),governmental programs, private programs, scientific areas and legislative production.


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We can define the discussion on childrens rights and the CRC as a legitimate

agonistic space (Nunes and Matias, 2003), i.e. a space where conceptions confront

each other which are distinct or opposed to the problem under debate, just as are the

actors [who are legitimately admitted to this space] who give voice to these

conceptions (ibidem:132).

It is important that childrens rights be discussed at the level of procedures, in

their social dimensions, in a perspective of inclusion and of fulfilment of citizenship and

of globalisation. Additionally, it should be examined from a critical standpoint in relation

to a historical process which is characterised by its attempt to impose supposedly

universal and unquestionable preconceptions onto children. It is necessary, still, to

strengthen the notion and the agenda of childrens rights, and to think with an

emancipated logic in relation to children. If we do not, we will soon run the risk of finding

childrens rights being concerned only with instrumental rationality, with technical and

rational formalism and with the logical and coherent application of the laws.

The discussion which has so far prevailed about childrens rights is one of legal

concern, often in opposition to the structural complexities and the social, economic,

political, cultural and ethical conditions. There has clearly been an attempt to

monopolise this in what childhood is intended to be, a kind of ideal childhood, the idea

of the global child. We can see this attempt, for example, in the analysis of the reports

produced by the various countries that ratified the CRC. There arises yet another

question which is that of the social and political appropriation by governments and by

organisations and institutions of the discourse on the rights of the child and the best

interest of the child.

CRC: harmonisation, uniformisation and standardisation

Although the UN proclaimed the Declaration of Human Rights on 10th December

1948, right back in the middle of the last century, the specific themes of childhood did

not feature. Only in 1959 did the General Assembly of the United Nations promulgate

the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

The year of 1979 was also important because it celebrated the International Year

of the Child. A UN working group, proposed by the Polish government, began to

prepare a Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, only towards the end of the

last century, with the adoption by the UN, in 1989, of the International Convention onthe Rights of the Child (CRC), was the child considered to be a full citizen, complete


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with the capacity to be the bearer of rights. The CRC was promptly adopted and

followed by the Action Plan for the implementation of the World Declaration on Survival,

Protection and Development of the Child, at the World Summit for Children, in 1990.

The CRC is the most ratified of all the treaties on human rights and implies an

array of important changes in the social group of childhood, namely the substitution of

the traditional concept of participation, recognising for children similar rights to those of

adults. The governments that approved the CRC committed themselves to allow

children to expand their capacities in a context without hunger, without poverty, without

violence, without negligence or other injustices or hardships, respecting at the same

time their civil, economic, social, cultural and political rights. In this way, the treaty came

to endorse, as has already been stated, that the child be considered, for the first time, a

being in possession of rights and fundamental liberties.

UNICEF argued that all programmes to be implemented should reflect the

principles of the CRC, which would then become a reference, regardless of whether a

country had ratified it or not. The CRC became, therefore, a model of global consensus.

With the UN Convention, childrens rights were no longer an option, a question of favour

or mere sympathy. They are a source of clear legal obligations that the 193 Member

States (until February 2007) should implement. Thus, the change in national legislations

in order to endorse the CRC can be understood as a phenomenon of trans-

nationalisation of the juridical field (Santos, 1995). In fact, the idea, which has been

emphasised, is that the protection of childrens rights is not only within the exclusive

competency of nations, but has assumed a more and more global configuration. For

this reason, it is mandatory for the national states to follow the international legal

instruments, which regulate this area. Despite all this, it is necessary to recall the

weakness that characterises the principle of universality of a right and the values that it

defends.

We may, however, state that the CRC, associated with the process of

globalisation, has had important effects on contemporary societies, namely in the

promotion of two mechanisms. The first one is legislative harmonisation. The CRC is

the first international instrument which is legally binding and which incorporates the

complete range of human rights civil and political rights, as well as economic, social

and cultural rights. In ratifying the CRC, national governments have committed in

protecting and assuring childrens rights and have accepted the responsibility, beforethe world, of enforcing this convention.


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The main consequence of the normative character attributed to the CRC was that

of obliging all Member States to adopt an active standpoint, adapting their respective

legislation to the text of the Convention, in the sense of ratifying it. Its universal

character produced this effect because it provides the whole world with common

universal norms of values, in relation to childhood. We may then confirm that the CRC

rebuilt the legal space of each country, a fact that created a certain amount of

uniformisation. However, this is not free of conflict, argument or critical voices, mainly

on the part of some African2 and Arab3 countries which ratified the CRC, but pointed out

its western and hegemonic spirit. Indeed, and in spite of the universal character of the

Convention, certain countries have not made its approval possible, or have maintained

a reserved position, since some principles seem to be incongruent with their legislation

already in force.

Simultaneously, it is a mistake to anticipate of the Convention the same

expectations found in internal legislations. By its nature, it is more difficult to assure

efficient cooperation and uniform application at the international level and, in the

absence of a supranational authority, demand action at various levels (Duncan, 2001).

The other mechanism is uniformisation and standardisation regarding the

worldwide conception that children have rights, that they are subject to rights and to the

conception of what should be the ideal childhood4.

As Pilotti (2001) says, the dissemination of the CRC in the 90s of the 20th century

could be characterised as the circulation of a text without a context. The author also

argues that, in the face of this, the attempt is to contextualise the CRC within the

globalisation of the dominant ideas about childrens role in contemporary western

society. In particular, some vital processes of modernity are highlighted, such as the

functions and images attributed to childhood in the context of the consolidation of

individualism and of the State.

2The Organisation of African Union (OAU 1963), replaced by the African Union (2002), was the first

regional organisation to adopt its own treaty on the Rights of the Child in Africa. Mozambique adopted itsown Declaration of the Rights of the Mozambican Child in the 5

thsession of the Popular Assembly.

3It should be noted that the effort of the Arab countries in relation to childhood protection at the

institutional level was started by the ministers of Social Services in 1979 with the social work strategy ofthe Arab world. In the same year, the Arab League and the council of Social Service ministers proclaimedthe rights of Arab children in the Charter of Rights of the Arab Child, a series of rights aimed exclusively

at Arab children, excluding foreign children who live in Arab countries and/or the non-Arab minorities ofthese countries.4

To know more on this matter cf. Toms (2006).


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One other question arises from this: the parallel and simultaneous occurrence of

the same phenomenon in different countries does not make a global phenomenon,

unless the endogenous causes, different from one country to another, have among

them structural resemblances and share elements of common and transnational

causes (Santos, 2001:92). Is that the case with childrens rights?

The CRC has given greater visibility to the way local, national, transnational and

international levels have looked at childrens rights, but it has also given a legal and

symbolic framework to the notion of childhood. Consequently, the way children live has

improved and they are now recognised as social actors, at least from the symbolic and

theoretical standpoint.

We can therefore consider the 80s and 90s of the 20 th century as years of

intense codification of the rights of the child and the creation of social justice for

children. However, the legal, abstract and universal norms have not always

corresponded to social practices.

To J. Hilary, of the Save the Children Fund(2002), the world seems to be moving

away from the compromise to create a better future and the initially assumed

commitments are fading away. The author also emphasises that Somalia and the USA

have neither signed nor ratified the CRC, and that it is, for that reason, difficult to

validate the global agreement without the support of all the countries of the world.

There is a formal consecration of childrens rights, but the lack of priority given in

their implementation and promotion is obvious at nearly all levels. On the one hand, the

international conventions and treaties reinforce and legitimise the groundwork, as

documents ratified by governments. And, on the other hand, these same documents

have a weak impact on the child population, and their mere endorsement does not offer

guarantees of implementation, promotion or even security. Indeed, if there is no

supervision over the way in which each country promotes and guarantees the CRC,

besides the periodical writing of reports for the International Committee on the Rights of

the Child, it is easy to see that, in a decades time, we will still be only saying that it is

the most ratified international document. This mainly happens when there is some

discrepancy between the written law and its application. The basic rights to protection,

to provision and to participation are universally recognised for children. The problem

resides in the way they are, or not, put into practice.

There is a variety of difficulties and resistances related to the applicability of theCRC after its ratification, mainly due to cultural mechanisms through which global ideas


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are received in local contexts. In addition, there are also cultural specificities in the

national process of incorporating the principles consecrated in international human

rights agreements (Pilotti, 2001), as well as the social, economic, political and legal

specificities of each country.

Beyond this, the application of some civil rights to children, in the CRC,

demonstrates that this idea is not universally accepted, due to the dual perspective

towards children. Actually, they are viewed as individual citizens, on the one hand, and

as dependent, on the other. This ambiguity defines the position of children, since they

are already invisible as individuals from the statistical and legal points of view and seen

as subordinate to adults.

We may confirm that childrens lives has improved significantly in recent decades

and that many changes continue to unfold; however, time and a profound change in

structural conditions and in social and economic policies are necessary in order to

promote and guarantee the rights of children. Besides, it is still important to transform

the authoritarian, paternalistic and discriminatory practices, which have characterised

the everyday life of children in the whole world. Thus, it has become imperative to follow

the laws and agreements which have already been agreed on and ratified (Rizzini,

2004:34).

Is the Convention a juridically inflexible and immutable text?

Nearly two decades after its birth, it is necessary to carry out a profound

reflection on and revision to the functioning of the CRC. For example, in view of the

improvement of its efficiency and its adaptation to the changes which have been

produced in contemporary societies.

Bissell (2001) considers that the nation-states that participated in and later

approved the CRC are the authors and guardians of the globalisation of childhood.

However, the question continues to be that of knowing if the nation-states, in the

framework of a hegemonic globalisation, really have the power or authority to act

according to the responsibility that is given to them. This seems to be a challenge

contained within the wider question of the sovereignty of the state. Another question is

that of knowing that if everyone defends the perspective of children as social actors, it

will make it into a collective belief.

On the one hand, childrens rights have been gradually adopted and applied indifferent countries because states share the same interstate system and the political


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changes are in part conditioned by economic development. [O]n the other hand, these

same reasons suggest that evolution varies significantly from one state to another,

according to its position in the interstate system and to the national society in respect of

the world-economy system (Santos, 1995:22).

In spite of being considered a fact by the majority of western countries, the

conquest of a body of rights for children is still found today in many civilisational

contexts as being very close to the one which characterised the beginning of the road in

the construction of such rights.

Besides this, it is urgent to reflect on a group of concepts, present in the CRC,

which are vague, indefinite, ambiguous and highly contested (Nelken, 1998; Van

Bueren, 1998; Freeman, 2000).

When we refer to article 12, which upholds the idea of participation, the CRC

states that all children capable of formulating their own judgement have the right to

express their opinion on the subjects that affect them. However, there is some

ambiguity over the form in which, in the adult world, the question of participation is

understood. In upholding the capacity of discernmentas a crucial ability for the child to

gain participation in its everyday world, this has opened a wide range of interpretations

that depend on the objectives of the adults, apart from preventing the access of the

child to the exercise of participation (Smith, 1997; Toms and Soares, 2004). Moreover,

when the tendency is frequently to idealise and naturalise childhood and the social and

cultural world of children, it becomes necessary to deconstruct these premises, which

implies questioning their relation with adults as a limitation to their existence.

The same problem arises with the term maturity. Lucchini considers that

maturity is defined by cognitive competences and empathetic capacities. The child is,

therefore, capable of anticipating what is expected of him or her and, consequently, is

also capable of deciding if he or she wants to or should respond to these expectations.

(2003:12). The theme in itself is subjective and fairly constrained because it does not

consider the life contexts in which the child is to be found.

For Geiler (2001:11), who bases his ideas on the principle of the indivisibility of

human rights, all rights in the CRC can create an individual complaint. Nevertheless,

they do not reflect the prevailing point of view in international jurisprudence, according

to which civil and political rights can be obtained by legal action, whereas the economic,

social and cultural rights may not.


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Another important issue is mentioned by Maehira (2004) as far as the actual

definition of the concept of a child is concerned. More specifically, the author wonders

which moment should be viewed as the beginning of a child's existence. This theme is

related to the debates over voluntary interruption of pregnancy, medically-assisted

reproduction and to the different religious and cultural questions which emerge among

countries and social groups. These were some of the issues which arose in the

preparation of the CRC and perhaps explain why there appears in the CRC until when

someone is considered a child and not from the moment, as in article 1 of the

document: For the purposes of the present Convention, a child means every human

being below the age of 18 years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority is

attained earlier.

The CRC presents some more complex challenges, such as how to settle

different interests between countries. In the discussion on article 17, which deals with

children and means of social communication, the discussion was complex because the

western delegates defended a formulation that guaranteed the free flow of information.

According to them, this intended to fight against an attitude of censorship, as well as to

support the recognition that some means of communication were private (Hammarberg,

1999).

It is not clear whose is the responsibility of developing guidelines, only what the

nature is of these guidelines and that the state should encourage them. It is clear, once

more, the lack of precision of the Convention that can be seen as an invitation to the

discussion of the objectives, instead of the prescription of exact methods of

implementation (ibid: 25).

The organisational aspects of the CRC also deserve analysis and urgent debate.

The delay in the delivery of the reports of the countries to the committee is another

important issue. According to the report of UNICEF Progress of Nations(1995), at theend of February 1995, 35 countries were delayed, by more than two years, in the

delivery of their reports and 21 by more than a year. Ten years later, the scenario is the

same (GDDC, 2006).

The Commission of Human Rights Working Group on Human Rights of

Children argued, during the 60th session, which took place in Geneva in 2004, that the

CRC had failed once more in the task of carrying out its mandate as the major body of

human rights in the UN. To the commission, the development was little and theobjectives achieved were few. In their opinion, this inadequate result is mainly due to


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the lack of interest demonstrated by all the states in the discussion of the situation of

human rights in the countries where economic, political and strategic interests are at

stake. This situation has led many NGOs and other observers to question the legitimacy

of the CRC.

They have argued, for example, that the fact of being a member of the CRC does

not imply regulating oneself by criteria such as the respect for and/or the promotion of

basic human rights. Therefore, many NGOs argue over the need for the reform of the

CRC, including new conditions to become a member. They warn that, in 2004, the

composition of the CRC makes it difficult to believe that the real intention of the

members is the promotion of human rights in the world, even more so when some of the

countries which have ratified the CRC have been accused by the NGOs of serious

human rights violations, among them Sudan, Nepal, the Russian Federation, China, Sri

Lanka, Zimbabwe and many others.

Besides the questions of interpretation, the CRC displays some weaknesses

which are also a part of the explanation of the difficulties in being fully promoted and

guaranteed, namely at the level of procedures (Toms, 2000; Freeman, 2000; Gareth,

2005). Geiler identifies some of these disadvantages: only a part of the members are

obliged to publish reports, which could lead to a loss of objectivity and the

beautification of the data, as well as of the analyses on the part of the states.

There is also a permanent tension between the 10 members of the Committee on

the Rights of the Child about the meetings of the committee which occur twice a year

and frequently only three to five reports are analysed, thus causing a disparity in the

total analysis of the reports.

Because of this, it has been suggested that the number of members be raised to

18, a proposal re-stated by the Commission of the United Nations for Human Rights

(Resolution 1998/76 of 22nd April). However, up to this date, no step has been taken in

this direction. The suggestions and recommendations made by the committee are not

legally binding, and depend only on the compromise adopted by the states and on

international pressure, the mobilisation of shame(2001: 9).

Freeman (2000) considers that, for the international rights of the child to have a

future, the CRC will have to be more intensively supervised; the Committee on the

Rights of the Child will have to have more powers and the reports produced by each

country are not enough, since they are a very weak device. As a consequence, othermeasures of control should be considered.


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Despite the symbolic significance of the Convention, we should not forget a

historical invariable that colours the defence of the rights of the child: high consensus

and low intensity. As said before, it is the most ratified international document but the

lack of priority given to its application is a simple fact. In addition, the ignorance of the

CRC by citizens is often regarded as an obstacle to its accurate implementation and

recognition.

We then need to discuss the CRC, because after decades when very little has

been achieved, it is legitimate to ask if the expectations will ever be fulfilled. In other

words, it is necessary to ascertain whether the CRC and all the other legal texts, both

sectoral and universal, that give voice to the concern for the well-being of children and

young people and for their rights of citizenship (and, if it turns into International

Conventions on the Rights of the Child and Young People), would be obeyed or if, on

the contrary, would continue to be disobeyed. The response, as we see, can only tend

towards a certain frustration of these very expectations.

The worldwide situation of childhood is rapidly heading towards a state of frailty

as far as childrens rights are concerned, in spite of being one of the groups that is more

often referred to when themes such as inclusion, the improvement of their conditions of

life, the promotion of participation, among others, are dealt with. In fact, when the

participation of children is approached, social practices are profoundly distorted in their

nature because many times participation is confused with consultation and occasional

actions, with the appearance of participation, practices that are destitute of any political

value, often empty of significance. These are considered by Luhmann as false

emancipation (1985). Actually, this is like a trick, a false illusion of the distinction

between superiors and subordinates, removing in this way the base of power from the

subordinate (ibidem), a kind of advertising slogan which gives individuals the illusion

that they are participating, when in fact the results are null and void.

Critical Reflections

The worldwide situation of childhood is rife with problems, tensions and

incapacities that call for our reflection and intervention. The changes caused by

neoliberal globalisation have emphasised some of the problems of the children of the

world such as hunger, sickness, exclusion and the like. We are witnessing the

incapacity to guarantee childrens rights, in spite of the attempt to make a global systemfor the sharing of values associated with childhood emerge, as made plain in the CRC.


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As emphasised before, this was the first binding international instrument where

obligations that the states should have towards children were presented and which

established an almost complete global consensus in relation to the basic rights of

children. Its centrality in discussing childrens rights is evident and the growth of interest

in children has increased because of it.

We cannot disengage the question of the CRC from the complex framework of

the development of modern citizenship, principally in the emergence of the concept of

the global or cosmopolitan citizen, an aspect that is intimately related with the promotion

and defence of childrens rights.

The Convention has emerged in a space and time of expansion of childrens

rights, especially during the period of internationalisation of human rights, in spite of the

process of preparation and drawing up having been very slow and tumultuous.

The CRC is a landmark in the history of childhood because it consecrates a

symbolic rearrangement of childrens place and because it places the child in the

position of an object for protection and, at the same time, a subject of rights. The great

hallmark was the change of paradigm of guardianship from object of rights to that of

subject of law. It is this situation of considering the child as the subject of law that has

contributed to the change of ways of thinking and of national laws and international

instruments, which is still under way.

In relation to its nature, the CRC is a legal milestone of the utmost importance for

the signatory countries, which, on ratifying it, accepted the inevitable obligations to

adapt the legal principles and framework of their countries. In relation to substance, the

CRC is the symbol of the process of an awakening towards a more global

consciousness of the question of childhood, and to the way in which childhood and

children are considered. All in all, within the international panorama, the cause of the

human rights of children has gained new and more secure ground.

This new complex and revolutionary status has caused a real change in the

images and conceptions of childhood and children, and has also led to changes in the

legal tools of the majority of countries, mainly in the process still under way of the

rejection of interventionist models and the adoption of a legal package which is more

adequate to the reality of the CRC.

It is worth noting that the great innovation of the CRC consists of considering

children as subjects of law, a condition which emerges fundamentally out of therecognition of their civil and political rights, challenges which imply deep social and


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cultural changes, new social and legal conceptualisations and, as a result, assessment

of the results, in the short, medium and long term. Nonetheless, it is necessary to

consider the importance of considerable critical thinking about the CRC with a view to

improving children's life conditions and effectively promoting their rights.

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