Can there be any universal children's rights?

Abstract

The article questions the normative universality of children's rights by considering the ideal definition of childhood implicit in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international law documents. It questions whether this definition has any universal purchase in light of different conceptions of childhood held across the world. The article distinguishes between rights that children have as human beings, and rights they are regarded as having by virtue of their age. The latter are regarded as problematic and the article illustrates this with examples that challenge the conception of childhood underlying the CRC. The article presents alternatives that may conflict with the assumptions underlying the CRC, and challenges the universal nature of the rights enshrined.