This book provides different perspectives on the concept of children’s rights, including policy, educational, and children’s perspectives. It examines how the crucial ideas of the Convention on the Rights of the Child are respected and implemented in 14 countries in five regions of the world. It looks at early childhood education, children’s participatory rights, and at how these rights are promoted and guaranteed in different countries. It explores the professional practice of education and its complexities, challenges and dilemmas, as well as the role of play, and of listening and participation. The book advocates children’s rights today, arguing for its vital importance, in the best interests of the children. In doing so, it furthers the understanding of children’s rights and spreads knowledge about the Convention, as a means of celebrating its 30th anniversary. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) comprises the potential to change the lives of children to the very best. It may exalt children from the position of marginalized citizens to the centre of policies all over the world. Even though the concept of children’s rights is omnipresent, the respect for children’s rights must be discussed. While the Convention brings the new perspective of children as citizens to the world, there are still challenges in its application. The book interrogates challenges in understanding and applying children rights and offers possible answers to these challenges. The ratification process itself, does not guarantee that children’s rights are respected. While all adults should take responsibility for implementing the UNCRC in everyday life, Early Childhood Education should give opportunities for children to learn and live their rights.

In 2014 the world’s most widely ratified human rights treaty, one specifically for children, reached the milestone of its twenty-fifth anniversary. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and in the time since then it has entered a new century, reshaping laws, policies, institutions and practices across the globe, along with fundamental conceptions of who children are, their rights and entitlements, and society’s duties and obligations to them. Yet despite its rapid entry into force worldwide, there are concerns that the Convention remains a high-level paper treaty without the traction on the ground needed to address ever-continuing violations of children’s rights. This book, based on papers from the conference ‘25 Years CRC’ held by the Department of Child Law at Leiden University, draws together a rich collection of research and insight by academics, practitioners, NGOs and other specialists to reflect on the lessons of the past 25 years, take stock of how international rights find their way into children’s lives at the local level, and explore the frontiers of children’s rights for the 25 years ahead.

A timely look at children's rights, the young activists who fought for them, and how readers can do the same by Amnesty International, Angelina Jolie, and Geraldine Van Bueren

Considering the rights of the child is now central to all fields involving children and to good multi-agency working. This book offers an explanation of the theoretical issues and the key policy developments that are crucial to all professions, and helps the reader to understand children's rights in relation to their role in working with children and young people. Looking at education, health, social care and welfare, it bridges the gap between policy and practice for children from Birth to 19 years. Chapters cover: - the child's right to play - youth justice and children's rights - the voice of the child - ethical dilemmas in different contexts - involvement, participation and decision making - safeguarding and child protection - social justice and exclusion This book helps the reader understand what constitutes good practice, whilst considering the advantages and tensions involved in working across disciplines to implement children's rights against a complex legislative and social policy backdrop. Essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students on Early Years, Early Childhood Studies, Childhood and Youth, Education, Law, Social Work, Play and Psychology courses, it is relevant to professionals working across education, health and social work.

This open access book critically explores what child protection policy and professional practice would mean if practice was grounded in human rights standards. This book inspires a new direction in child protection research – one that critically assesses child protection policy and professional practice with regard to human rights in general, and the rights of the child in particular. Each chapter author seeks to approach the rights of the child from their own academic field of interest and through a comparative lens, making the research relevant across nation-state practices. The book is split into five parts to focus on the most important aspects of child protection. The first part explains the origins, aim, and scope of the book; the second part explores aspects of professionalism and organization through law and policy; and the third part discusses several key issues in child protection and professional practice in depth. The fourth part discusses selected areas of importance to child protection practices (low-impact in-house measures, public care in residential care and foster care respectively) and the fifth part provides an analytical summary of the book. Overall, it contributes to the present need for a more comprehensive academic debate regarding the rights of the child, and the supranational perspective this brings to child protection policy and practice across and within nation-states. .

Norway tops international indexes on children's rights but continues to attract criticism for its level of compliance with the Convention of the Rights of Child. This book address this implementation paradox.The authors ask: What is the current level of implementation? How can we explain any gap in perceived performance? Can we improve our measurement of children's rights? With the use of quantitative and qualitative methods, the volume examines a wide range of areas relevant to children's rights. These include child protection and sexual violence, detention and policing, poverty and custody proceedings, asylum and disability, sexual orientation and gender identity, and childcare and human rights education. In addition, the book offers a proposal for an alternative statistical approach to measuring Norway's performance. The book's editors conclude by pointing towards the complex set of factors that complicate full realisation and the need for the Government to engage in proper measurement of implementation

From where they live and which school they attend to whether they may work, children's decisions are controlled by parents and guardians. Advocates of equal rights for children have, however, offered both empirical evidence and ethical arguments against the popular assumption that children are incompetent to exercise the same freedoms as adults. Laura M. Purdy here challenges both aspects of the case for children's liberation, rejecting the conclusion that in democratic societies legal distinctions between children and adults should be eliminated.