ABSTRACT
The concept of children’s rights is both ambiguous and highly contested. What do rights for children mean? Who is responsible for asserting them? Many have questioned whether the term rights is even appropriate. For others the self-evident fact that children do have rights is the best proof of the superiority of the so called ‘interest’ theory of rights as compared to the competing ‘will’ theory.1 But how are we at the same time to treat children as capable of exercising rights whilst also emphasising how much they need our protection? It is certainly no easy matter to find one concept capable of integrating with any coherence children’s demands for autonomy with the realities of their dependence and vulnerability. As this collection shows, however, despite the multi-faceted, unwieldy, and even contradictory nature of much ‘rights talk’ (or perhaps because of this?) the idea that children do and should have rights has made considerable progress, and has become central to one of the most successful recent global campaigns, with almost 200 countries having now signed the relevant 1989 United Nations Convention.
