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.

This open access book presents a discussion on human rights-based attributes for each article pertinent to the substantive rights of children, as defined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). It provides the reader with a unique and clear overview of the scope and core content of the articles, together with an analysis of the latest jurisprudence of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. For each article of the UNCRC, the authors explore the nature and scope of corresponding State obligations, and identify the main features that need to be taken into consideration when assessing a State’s progressive implementation of the UNCRC. This analysis considers which aspects of a given right are most important to track, in order to monitor States' implementation of any given right, and whether there is any resultant change in the lives of children. This approach transforms the narrative of legal international standards concerning a given right into a set of characteristics that ensure no aspect of said right is overlooked. The book develops a clear and comprehensive understanding of the UNCRC that can be used as an introduction to the rights and principles it contains, and to identify directions for future policy and strategy development in compliance with the UNCRC. As such, it offers an invaluable reference guide for researchers and students in the field of childhood and children’s rights studies, as well as a wide range of professionals and organisations concerned with the subject.

This in-depth text goes beyond the rhetoric of the debate on children’s rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in particular, to provide a detailed examination of the impact that U.S. ratification of the Convention would have on U.S. law. The chapters have been written by leading children’s advocates and scholars with a general audience in mind, as the authors believe that it is important for all Americans to become informed about the Convention and about children’s rights in general. With a greater understanding of the substance of the Convention and children’s rights, readers will be better positioned to determine what the real issues are, what is simply rhetoric without any basis in fact or law, and how they can address the real issues in an effective manner in order to provide a better world for all children.

This book explores the human rights principle of participation and the human right to participation. The work presents an argument that international human rights law imposes obligations to enable participation, and demonstrates that it has been interpreted in this way by authoritative bodies. Divided into four parts, Part I provides the historical and theoretical background. Part II presents the argument that a right to participation and a human rights principle of participation exist in international law and Part III argues that human rights law, and the way it has been interpreted, can provide a coherent account of the content of such a right and principle. The conclusions of the book and their implications are explored in Part IV. While there have been several studies of specific forms of participation, such as collective bargaining, this study provides a coherent account of the meaning and application of participation in international human rights law as a whole. The book will be an invaluable resource for academics, researchers, and policy-makers working in the area of international human rights law.

This treatise is a detailed article-by-article examination of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Each article of the CRPD contains a methodical analysis of the preparatory works, followed by an exhaustive examination of the contents of each article based on case law and concluding observations from the CRPD Committee, judgments from national and international courts and tribunals, pertinent UN and other reports, the key literature on the article under review. The volume features commentary from a broad range of scholars across a variety of disciplines in order to provide a comprehensive study of the legal, psychological, education, sociological, and other aspects of the CPRD. This encyclopaedic commentary on the CRPD effectively covers all the issues arising from international disability law and practice, and will be an ideal resource for all working in the field.

The concept of the migrant as rights bearer at law is surprisingly recent and under-developed. Migrants have traditionally been seen as outsiders, persons who are in society but not yet of society. Migrants are at best invitees, ’guests’ for whom presence in a country is a privilege. This is the first of two volumes which bring together writings which trace the evolution in thinking about migrants as legal subjects and rights holders. The articles cover: issues around state sovereignty and migrants as subjects of international law; the articulation of rights; different categories of migrants; issues around health and disability. The volume also features an extended article on the proposal for an International Migrants’ Bill of Rights (IMBR) put forward by an international consortium of academics and students. A related volume Refugees and Rights is also published as part of the series.