ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to the rights of the child, focusing on the seminal United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). It also probes the relationship between international child rights law and European asylum law a necessary undertaking in light of the aim of this book, which is to assess European asylum law in the light of the rights of the child. This is important because the aim of the chapter is to evaluate the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) in the light of the rights of the child, which presupposes that there is obligation for EU law to comply with the rights of the child. This debate relates not so much to the rights children have in positive law, but rather to the foundations of such rights in moral theory. The contours of this debate one that has repercussions in the asylum context are sketched, before the chapter turns to a discussion of the CRC.
