Scholars from a range of different disciplines explore how best to implement children's rights.

Since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) children’s rights have assumed a central position in a wide variety of disciplines and policies. This handbook offers an engaging overview of the contemporary research landscape for those people in the theory and practice of children’s rights. The volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to children’s rights, as well as key thematic issues in children’s rights at the intersection of global and local concerns. The main approaches and topics within the volume are: • Law, social work, and the sociology of childhood and anthropology • Geography, childhood studies, gender studies and citizenship studies • Participation, education and health • Juvenile justice and alternative care • Violence against children and female genital mutilation • Child labour, working children and child poverty • Migration, indigenous children and resource exploitation The specially commissioned chapters have been written by renowned scholars and researchers and come together to provide a critical and invaluable guide to the challenges and dilemmas currently facing children’s rights.

Recognizing the various ecological contexts that support children’s development while amplifying voices from across the globe, this book challenges narrow interpretations of quality and best practice. Each author offers a unique perspective on issues germane to the field of early childhood education: perceptions of children, curriculum, teacher education, and play-based learning. An innovative, timely, and much-needed contribution, this book represents an inclusive collection of theoretical and cultural knowledge, as well as research. Such a diverse multicentric lens opens new intellectual pathways for authentic, reciprocal knowledge exchange, while ensuring that a reimagining of early childhood education remains at the core of our teaching practice, scholarship, and activism. This book invites everyone to imagine, to dare to believe, to hope, and to act—in the interests of children, in the interests of communities and families, and in the moral precepts of equity, inclusion and justice.

Children's rights law is a relatively young but rapidly developing discipline. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the field's core legal instrument, is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. Yet, like children themselves, children's rights are often relegated to the margins in mainstream legal, political, and other discourses, despite their application to approximately one-third of the world's population and every human being's first stages of life. Now thirty years old, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) signalled a definitive shift in the way that children are viewed and understood--from passive objects subsumed within the family to full human beings with a distinct set of rights. Although the CRC and other children's rights law have spurred positive changes in law, policies, and attitudes toward children in numerous countries, implementation remains a work in progress. We have reached a state in the evolution of children's rights in which we need more critical evaluation and assessment of the CRC and the large body of children's rights law and policy that this treaty has inspired. We have moved from conceptualizing and adopting legislation to focusing on implementation and making the content of children's rights meaningful in the lives of all children. This book provides a critical evaluation and assessment of children's rights law, including the CRC. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners from around the world, it aims to elucidate the content of children's rights law, explore the complexities of implementation, and identify critical challenges and opportunities for children's rights law.

Building on recent human rights scholarship, childhood studies and child rights programming, this conceptual framework on children's rights proposes three key-notions: living rights, or the lived experiences in which rights take shape; social justice, or the shared normative beliefs that make rights appear legitimate for those who struggle to get them recognised; and translations, or the complex flux between different beliefs and perspectives on rights and their codification. By exploring the relationships between these three concepts, the realities and complexities of children's rights are highlighted. The framework is critical of approaches to children as passive targets of good intentions and aims to disclose how children craft their own conceptions and practices of rights. The contributions offer important insights into new ways of thinking and research within this emerging field.

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.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which was adopted unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989, marked a turning point in the perception of children in international law and policy. Although it was hoped that the Convention would have a significant and positive impact on the lives of all children, this has not happened in many parts of the world. This edited volume, based on empirical research and Non-Governmental Organisation project data, explores the progress of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and to a lesser extent, the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, in nine African countries in the 25 years since it was adopted by the UN General Assembly. The book considers the implementation of the Convention both in terms of policy and practice, and its impact on the lived experiences of children in societies across the continent, focusing on specific themes such as HIV/AIDS, education and disability, child labour, witchcraft stigmatisation, street children, parent-child relationships and child participation. The book breaks new ground in blending legal and social perspectives of the experiences of children, and identifies concrete ways forward for the better implementation of the CRC treaty in the various political contexts that exist in Africa.

This thoroughly updated second edition presents a comprehensive legal perspective on the inherently interdisciplinary field of children's rights. Chapters provide an article-by-article analysis of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including its Optional Protocols, as well as contextualised advice on the interpretation and implementation of its provisions.

The book is a reflection on childhood, dealing especially with children's wellbeing and the implementation of their rights. Starting from the recognition – first expressed in the 1924 Declaration of the Rights of the Child and reaffirmed in the 2000 Treaty of Nice as well as in more recent initiatives of the European Union – that children must be granted the right to be considered as persons and afforded the best possible living conditions, the book's aim is to create a dialog among scholars with different backgrounds. For this reason, it draws on a range of different vocabularies, conceptual apparatuses and methodologies, as we are convinced that it is reductive to confine research and theory within specific disciplinary bounds. This is particularly true of a topic as complex as that of childhood today, especially in the light of the changes within the family that have taken place or are still in the making. Accordingly, the key terms in the text are agency and autonomy, participation and well-being. But what does each of them actually mean? How do they can be analysed and measured? What initiatives can be taken? The ontological overturning of the status of childhood that has emerged in recent years, whereby children are now considered as social actors and subjects in their own right, urges us to keep the focus on the contexts in the light of the unexpected consequences of applying the fundamental principles of the new sociology of childhood. The book is addressed not only to a small audience of specialists, but also to students, practitioners and those who are curious about the topic, providing them with fresh insights and information.

Strategies for Collaborating With Children: Creating Partnerships in Occupational Therapy and Research applies client-centered and strengths-based theories to pediatric practice. The text is organized using a research-based conceptual model of collaboration. Within this text, there are detailed descriptions of how to engage and work with children aged 3 to 12 years, from the beginning to the end of therapy. Dr. Clare Curtin covers a variety of topics, such as how to interview children, involve them in defining the purpose of therapy, and develop self-advocacy. Similarly presented is the therapist’s role as a guide in setting respectful limits, teaching self-regulation, avoiding power struggles, and co-creating educational experiences that are challenging and fun. Strategies for Collaborating With Children: Creating Partnerships in Occupational Therapy and Research advocates for children's rights and participation in therapy and research. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the new sociology of childhood, and childhood studies are discussed. Also included are children's perspectives on what therapists should know and what children said they might be thinking at each stage of therapy. The last chapter focuses on methods to enhance children’s participation in research, including adaptations for children with disabilities. Unique features: Describes a new research-based model of collaboration with children Incorporates children’s views and knowledge about therapy Illustrates the use of client-centered and strengths-based theories as well as child-friendly approaches within pediatric practice Provides over 1,600 practical strategies that are exemplified by stories with actual dialogue Describes ways to involve children throughout the research process Identifies verbal, visual, and activity-based participatory research methods for eliciting children's voices, including creative ways to involve children with different levels of abilities Includes review questions at the end of each chapter Included with the text are online supplemental materials for faculty use in the classroom. Strategies for Collaborating With Children: Creating Partnerships in Occupational Therapy and Research delivers a comprehensive resource for collaborating with children for the occupational therapist, occupational therapy assistant, or any other practitioner working with children in a therapeutic setting.