The Convention on the Rights of the Child and its conception of childhood
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Discussions about the Convention on the Rights of the Child are often excessively legalistic. This obscures the possibility for a deeper engagement with the text of the Convention to identify its underlying values and conception of childhood. This paper engages with this less chartered terrain. It first traces the shift from an instrumentalist, to a welfarist, to a rights-based conception of childhood. Next, it explores the discrete features of this rights based conception of childhood under the Convention which is shown to recognise and accommodate both children’s vulnerabilities and evolving capacities while also challenging traditional systems that silence and marginalise children. Finally, it addresses some of the enduring and emerging concerns with the idea of children’s rights – that it is divisive, grounded in western values and incapable of accommodating non-human ecological concerns – to reveal a more dynamic, relational and accommodating conception of childhood than is often assumed to be the case under a rights-based approach.
Source: Global Studies of Childhood
Author: John Tobin
Institution: The University of Melbourne
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,400
OpenAlex ID: W4416676974