ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the relationship between children's rights and discrimination against children. It explores what forms this discrimination can take, the mechanisms via which it affects children, and the nature of the effects, using health and health care as the context. Discrimination can be direct or indirect. Indirect discrimination is the inequitable treatment of one group disadvantaging another, as opposed to direct discrimination in which the focus of discriminatory attitudes, actions and policies is the group itself. Marginalisation is when a group experiencing discrimination is not seen as part of the core business or service. Children are seen as immature, i.e. incapable or unfinished; simply on the road to adulthood rather than people in their own right. Child poverty is thus a policy choice, despite the overwhelming body of evidence documenting the detrimental impact of poverty on the development and health of children. Discrimination can be internalised.
