ABSTRACT
Children's human rights law has a number of distinctive characteristics – presumed and real. This chapter explores and assesses these distinctive characteristics and their potential to enrich the general or other specific human rights regimes. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is very comprehensive in scope. It covers the traditional categories of both civil and political rights, as well as economic, social and cultural rights. Children's rights law, and in particular the CRC, has also been argued to have introduced new substantive norms or new substantive elements, such as additional non-discrimination grounds, a broader notion of the right to life, evolving capacities and additional elements of the right to education. Article 3(1) CRC provides that, in all actions concerning children, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration. Other CRC provisions too mention the best interests of the child. The CRC is said to be governed by four overarching general principles.
