page_title: Children's rights
section_title: Justifications
hierarchical_section_title: Children's rights / Justifications
caption_attribution_description: A boy working as a "clock boy" on the streets of Merida, Mexico.Clock Boy
context_page_description: Children's rights are a subset of human rights with particular attention to the rights of special protection and care afforded to minors. The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as "any human being below the age of eighteen years, unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier." Children's rights includes their right to association with both parents, human identity as well as the basic needs for physical protection, food, universal state-paid education, health care, and criminal laws appropriate for the age and development of the child, equal protection of the child's civil rights, and freedom from discrimination on the basis of the child's race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, disability, color, ethnicity, or other characteristics. Interpretations of children's rights range from allowing children the capacity for autonomous action to the enforcement of children being physically, mentally and emotionally free from abuse, though what constitutes "abuse" is a matter of debate. Other definitions include the rights to care and nurturing.
context_section_description: [There] is a mass of human rights law, both treaty and 'soft law', both general and child-specific, which recognises the distinct status and particular requirements of children. [Children], owing to their particular vulnerability and their significance as the future generation, are entitled to special treatment generally, and, in situations of danger, to priority in the receipt of assistance and protection.
  — Jenny Kuper, International law concerning child civilians in armed conflict (1997, Clarendon Press)
  As minors by law, children do not have autonomy or the right to make decisions on their own for themselves in any known jurisdiction of the world. Instead their adult caregivers, including parents, social workers, teachers, youth workers, and others, are vested with that authority, depending on the circumstances. Some believe that this state of affairs gives children insufficient control over their own lives and causes them to be vulnerable. Louis Althusser has gone so far as to describe this legal machinery, as it applies to children, as "repressive state apparatuses".
  Structures such as government policy have been held by some commentators to mask the ways adults abuse and exploit children, resulting in child poverty, lack of educational opportunities, and child labour. On this view, children are to be regarded as a minority group towards whom society needs to reconsider the way it behaves.
  Researchers have identified children as needing to be recognized as participants in society whose rights and responsibilities need to be recognized at all ages.
caption: A boy working as a "clock boy" on the streets of Merida, Mexico
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