ABSTRACT

In the last chapter we showed the connection between intra-and intergenerational justice, culminating in the concept of ecojustice. Ecojustice joins first generations with the remote future. Ajar Malhotra also argues, as this work does, for the unavoidable interface between the rights of the child and those of the future, as he outlines three major points, two of which are cited here below:

Firstly, many legal systems on the material plane do provide for laws of inheritance that accept persons not yet born as being beneficiaries. Secondly, while the similarity between future generations, which do not yet exist, with those existing but legally incompetent is certainly arguable, legal systems do confer rights on human beings who are incapable of regarding themselves as bearers of rights, for instance infants and those severely mentally disabled.1,2

The third point refers to the language of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, as he comments on the setting of an upper limit to the definition of the child, while the convention ‘deliberately avoids setting a floor’3 as was noted above as well.