ABSTRACT
Children’s interests to fulfil basic social and economic needs have been recognised as legitimate concerns and are entrenched in the regimes of international and domestic law on the rights of the child. For example, economic and social rights of children are at the core of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, United Nations General Assembly, 1989), whose ratification by the vast majority of States suggests that these rights can be enjoyed by all the world’s children. Yet, in the developing countries where over 80 per cent of the world’s children live, the realisation of economic and social rights remains an unfulfilled aspiration due to capacity constraints and other challenges (UNICEF, 2004). This raises the question as to who should be responsible for securing realisation of children’s economic and social rights, and how the respective obligations of duty-bearers should be approached in an age of universal rights of the child.
