ABSTRACT
Children did not figure prominently in international human rights treaties in
the twentieth century. Although there were attempts to create minimum
international standards of welfare for children in extraordinary situations of
war or devastation, it was generally thought that parents, especially mothers,
would provide for the well-being of children. Children, it was assumed, could
safely be left to the private sphere of the family. By the 1970s, however, a
greater awareness of the complex roles children play within society and the
economy, coupled with a more critical understanding of the family, led to a loss of faith in the notion of the all-sustaining family. The myth that the day-
to-day well-being of children could be left to the family – and the family
would be able to provide appropriately for children – gave way under pressure
from child-centred civil social movements that focused on the needs and enti-
tlements of children themselves. The view that children might have rights or
that that they enjoy full personhood began seriously to influence debates for
the first time. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989
marked the triumph of the children’s rights-based approach. The purpose of this chapter is to examine how this new model of rights-
based governance has gradually come about and to describe how it works.
We pay detailed attention to the CRC in particular, which we treat as a
global bill of rights for children. We also note the ways in which the emer-
gence of rights-based governance has transformed the role of international
agencies such as UNICEF and the ILO. Rights-based governance, and the
CRC in particular, have been presented variously as a tool of cultural
oppression or a global public good and an instrument that radically improves the lot of children. Although it has inspired some changes in
international organizations, advocacy strategies and development policy, its
direct impact on children has nevertheless been rather less than either of
these arguments would suppose. The CRC establishes a global model of
childhood based on rights; but it has serious deficits in terms of imple-
mentation. As a result, it has not addressed many of the manifold injustices
or the social marginalization to which poor children and young people are
subject, and it has certainly not standardized the lives children actually lead. It has given them legal entitlements; but these have not been made
real. We nonetheless suggest that rights-based governance has transformed
the global politics of childhood in crucial ways. It has established the first
global regime of childhood, in which states no longer have the sovereign
authority to decide the spaces children and young people should occupy in society, nor their rights and duties; moreover, it has created a (weak)
mechanism of global accountability above states. Perhaps more significantly,
it has also provided a regime through which non-governmental actors can
seek accountability and press for reform on behalf of children.
