"This book is a guide for every young person who believes in a better world for all"—Malala Yousafzai Adults are aware of their universal human rights of freedom and equality, but children often are ignorant of the rights they possess before reaching the age of majority. Enter Know Your Rights and Claim Them, written in partnership with Amnesty International, Angelina Jolie, and Geraldine Van Bueren. Know Your Rights and Claim Them details the rights promised in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, starting with the history of child rights, and providing a clear description of the types of child rights, the young activists from around the world who fought to defend them, and how readers can stand up for their own rights. "This is the perfect book for young people who care about the world and want to make a difference"—Greta Thunberg

The Rights of Children in the United States provides discussion on: the historical and contextual perspective on the rights of children; the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; and the differing views on children's rights and competencies.

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 book explores the meaning and implementation of international children’s rights law, as laid down in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and related international and regional human rights instruments. It considers the application of international children’s rights at the national level and addresses key procedural and institutional matters concerning children’s rights implementation, including monitoring, complaints mechanisms, effective remedies, advocacy and international agenda-setting. The book breaks new ground by analysing a wide range of international children’s rights issues from a legal perspective. It incorporates a comparative perspective on children’s rights law at the international, regional and domestic level and contains information on evidence-based strategies towards the implementation and enforcement of international children’s rights law. The book is targeted at academics, legal and other professionals, and advanced students. It analyses children’s rights law in the following areas: implementation and enforcement; advocacy and standard setting; complaints and remedies; the child and the family; adoption; alternative care; protection from violence; civil rights of the child; economic, social and cultural rights; education; health; migration and refugees; children and the justice system; children with disabilities; deprivation of liberty; children’s rights and digital technologies; war and disaster; sustainable development goals and further contemporary issues.

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. .

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 presents an integral, cross-cultural reflection on the social reality of children's rights and citizenship, giving an insight into new perspectives on the history and different concepts of children's rights in a contextualized and localized manner.

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.

While the notion of young people as individuals worthy or capable of having rights is of relatively recent origin, over the past several decades there has been a substantial increase in both social and political commitment to children’s rights as well as a tendency to grant young people some of the rights that were typically accorded only to adults. In addition, there has been a noticeable shift in orientation from a focus on children’s protection and provision to an emphasis on children’s participation and self-determination. With contributions from a wide range of international scholars, the Handbook of Children’s Rights brings together research, theory, and practice from diverse perspectives on children’s rights. This volume constitutes a comprehensive treatment of critical perspectives concerning children’s rights in their various forms. Its contributions address some of the major scholarly tensions and policy debates comprising the current discourse on children’s rights, including the best interests of the child, evolving capacities of the child, states’ rights versus children’s rights, rights of children versus parental or family rights, children as citizens, children’s rights versus children’s responsibilities, and balancing protection and participation. In addition to its multidisciplinary focus, the handbook includes perspectives from social science domains in which children’s rights scholarship has evolved largely independently due to distinct and seemingly competing assumptions and disciplinary approaches (e.g., childhood studies, developmental psychology, sociology of childhood, anthropology, and political science). The handbook also brings together diverse methodological approaches to the study of children’s rights, including both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, and policy analysis. This comprehensive, cosmopolitan, and timely volume serves as an important reference for both scholarly and policy-driven interest in the voices and perspectives of children and youth.

With a very simple text accompanied by rich, vibrant illustrations a young narrator describes what it means to be a child with rights -- from the right to food, water and shelter, to the right to go to school, to the right to be free from violence, to the right to breathe clean air, and much more. The book emphasizes that these rights belong to every child on the planet, whether they are "black or white, small or big, rich or poor, born here or somewhere else." It also makes evident that knowing and talking about these rights are the first steps toward making sure that they are respected. A brief afterword explains that the rights outlined in the book come from the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989. The treaty sets out the basic human rights that belong to children all over the world, recognizing that children need special protection since they are more vulnerable than adults. It has been ratified by 193 countries, with the exception of Somalia and the United States. Once a country has ratified the document, they are legally bound to comply with it and to report on their efforts to do so. As a result, some progress has been made, not only in awareness of children's rights, but also in their implementation. But there are still many countries, wealthy and poor, where children's basic needs are not being met. To read a summary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, go to www.unicef.org/crc/files/Rights_overview.pdf.