Integrating Child Rights within Human Rights

For most of recorded history, children had no rights of their own. They were treated as property, defined by their usefulness, and left entirely at the mercy of adults. The idea that a child could be a rights-holder – an individual with legally protected entitlements – is relatively recent, and it took centuries of intellectual, social, and legal struggle to get there. Today, child rights are not a separate system that exists alongside human rights; they are a deepening and specification of human rights, built on the same foundation of human dignity and extended to the most vulnerable members of society.

When children were not rights-holders 🔗

Humanium’s history of children’s rights traces how, in ancient societies, children were often regarded as property rather than individuals. In ancient Rome, the concept of patria potestas granted fathers almost absolute power over their children – including the right to sell them. Children were seen primarily as economic assets, valued for their labour or the alliances their marriages could secure. There was no language of childhood as a protected phase of life, and certainly no legal framework to enforce it.

The intellectual shift began during the Enlightenment. Philosophers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau challenged the idea of children as small adults and argued instead that childhood was a unique and formative stage of life requiring special care. Locke proposed that children were born as tabula rasa – blank slates – whose development depended entirely on the experiences and education they received. Rousseau, in his work Émile, went further, arguing that children were fundamentally different from adults and that their growth must be supported at each stage of development. These ideas planted the intellectual seeds from which a rights-based understanding of childhood would eventually grow.

By the 19th century, the industrial revolution had made the exploitation of children impossible to ignore. Children were working in mines, factories, and workshops under brutal conditions. Governments began legislating child protection, but the approach remained paternalistic – the state would step in where families failed, not because children had rights, but because society disapproved of the harm. The idea of children as rights-holders was still decades away.

The first international recognition: the Geneva Declaration (1924) 🔗

The turning point came after World War I, when the suffering of children across Europe became a catalyst for international action. In 1924, the League of Nations adopted the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child, drafted by Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children. It was a short document – just five principles – but it was historically significant. For the first time, an intergovernmental body formally recognised that children have specific entitlements: to the means of normal development, to relief in times of distress, to protection from exploitation, and to an upbringing that instils social duty.

The Geneva Declaration was, as legal historians at TheLaw.Institute note, revolutionary not just for what it said but for what it represented. It established that children have needs distinct from adults and deserve universal protection regardless of race, nationality, or religion. However, it was not legally binding, and its language remained welfare-oriented rather than rights-based. Children were still seen as objects of protection, not as subjects of rights.

From welfare to rights: the 1948 UDHR and the 1959 Declaration 🔗

After World War II, the international community took a broader step. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights mentioned children explicitly in Article 25, affirming that motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance, and that all children – whether born in or out of wedlock – shall enjoy the same social protection. This was significant: it embedded children’s welfare within the broader architecture of universal human rights for the first time.

In 1959, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, expanding the original five Geneva principles into ten. It recognised children’s rights to education, healthcare, a supportive environment, and protection from discrimination. It also introduced the concept of growing up in a family environment and acknowledged that children must be able to develop physically, mentally, socially, morally, and spiritually with freedom and dignity. Yet like its predecessor, the 1959 Declaration had no legal force – it was a statement of intent, not an enforceable obligation.

The critical gap, as Cultural Survival’s analysis explains, was that children continued to be seen as objects of international human rights law rather than subjects of rights. They were protected by adults, not empowered as individuals. The shift from object to subject – from recipient to rights-holder – required a new kind of international instrument.

The landmark shift: the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) 🔗

The process of drafting a legally binding convention on children’s rights began in 1979, declared the International Year of the Child by the United Nations. Work started on a draft convention submitted by the government of Poland, motivated by the need for a comprehensive, enforceable statement after years of documented abuses – high infant mortality, deficient healthcare, children in conflict zones, children exploited in labour and prostitution. The drafting process took a full decade, finally culminating in the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) by the UN General Assembly on 20 November 1989.

The CRC was a paradigm shift. As UNICEF describes it, the Convention embeds a profound idea: that children are not objects who belong to their parents and for whom decisions are made, nor adults in training – they are human beings with their own rights. Childhood, the Convention affirms, is a special, protected time in which children must be allowed to grow, learn, play, develop, and flourish with dignity.

Humanium notes that in the CRC, for the first time, children are identified as rights-holders rather than passive recipients. This was the critical sociological and legal evolution: governments were no longer doing children a favour by protecting them – they were now legally obligated to respect and fulfil children’s rights. The CRC has since become the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, with 196 UN member states having ratified it.

Child rights as part of the human rights framework 🔗

A key question that the CRC answers is: why do children need their own convention if human rights are already universal? UNICEF explains that children were already protected under the umbrella of general human rights, but it was necessary to develop specific legal instruments that provided protections and rights to children as subjects of rights. Children and young people have the same general human rights as adults – but they also have specific rights that recognise their particular needs, their vulnerability, and their evolving capacities.

UNICEF Australia clarifies this relationship precisely: even though the rights in the CRC are similar to those adults hold, the Convention makes clear that adults and governments have extra responsibilities to ensure that children can access all their rights – because children are growing, learning, and sometimes need additional protection due to their age. In this sense, child rights do not compete with or replace universal human rights; they extend and specify them for a group that general frameworks were not sufficient to protect.

The CRC is also part of the broader international human rights framework alongside nine core human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. All of these instruments are interconnected, and the principles in the CRC must be interpreted in light of that wider human rights architecture.

The four core principles of the CRC 🔗

The Convention’s 54 articles are guided by four general principles that run through every provision and shape how all other rights are interpreted and applied. As outlined by the OHCHR, these four principles are:

Non-discrimination (Article 2) – All children within a state’s jurisdiction must enjoy their rights without discrimination of any kind, regardless of race, religion, gender, disability, nationality, or the status of their parents. The essential message is equality of opportunity.

Best interests of the child (Article 3) – When any authority – courts, legislative bodies, administrative agencies, or welfare institutions – makes decisions affecting children, the best interests of the child must be a primary consideration. This principle applies equally in family life and in government policy.

Right to life, survival, and development (Article 6) – Every child has the right not merely to survive, but to develop to their full potential. The OHCHR emphasises that “development” here includes mental, emotional, cognitive, social, and cultural dimensions – not just physical health.

Respect for the views of the child (Article 12) – Children capable of forming their own views have the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting them, and those views must be given due weight in accordance with the child’s age and maturity. This principle marks the clearest departure from the old welfare paradigm: children are not passive objects of adult decisions but active participants in their own lives.

Beyond 1989: Optional Protocols and ongoing accountability 🔗

The adoption of the CRC did not mark the end of the process. The United Nations strengthened the framework through three Optional Protocols. The first, adopted in 2000, prohibits the recruitment of children under 18 into armed forces and their participation in hostilities. The second addresses the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography. The third, adopted in 2011 and in force since 2014, provides a communications procedure that allows individual children to submit complaints to the UN when their rights have been violated and their own country’s legal system was unable to offer a remedy.

Monitoring is carried out by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, a body of 18 independent experts that reviews state reports and issues guidance on implementing the Convention’s provisions. Over the past three decades, the CRC has inspired governments to change laws and policies so that more children receive the healthcare and nutrition they need, stronger safeguards protect them from violence and exploitation, and more children have their voices heard in society. Child mortality has fallen significantly since 1990 – a direct outcome of the policy commitments the Convention helped drive.

Yet as UN child rights experts have stated, the challenge now is moving from universal ratification to universal implementation – ensuring that the rights written into the Convention are actually realised for the children most often left behind: girls, children with disabilities, children in poverty, children in conflict zones, and children from minority or indigenous communities.

Why this evolution matters for education 🔗

Understanding how child rights became embedded within the human rights framework is not just a matter of legal history. Save the Children points out that the Convention requires governments to fulfil children’s basic needs and help them reach their full potential – and central to this is education. Article 29 of the CRC directs that education must be aimed at the full development of a child’s personality, talents, and abilities, and must prepare children for responsible life in a free society. This places the right to education not as a privilege or a gift from the state, but as an enforceable entitlement rooted in human dignity.

For educators and policymakers, this framing changes the conversation entirely. A child who is denied a quality education is not simply missing an opportunity – their rights are being violated. And the principles of non-discrimination, best interests, and respect for the child’s voice apply directly to how classrooms are structured, how discipline is administered, and how decisions about children’s learning are made.

What do you think? Given that child rights are legally binding obligations on states, how should schools and teachers actively reflect the principle of “best interests of the child” in everyday classroom decisions? And considering how long it took for children to be recognised as rights-holders rather than objects of protection, are there ways in which current educational systems still treat children more as recipients than as active participants in their own learning?

References

1. https://www.humanium.org/en/childrens-rights-history/
2. https://thelaw.institute/law-and-vulnerable-groups/evolution-child-protection-laws-welfare-rights/
3. https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/history-child-rights
4. https://thelaw.institute/human-rights-evolution-concepts-and-concerns/historical-evolution-childrens-rights-league-to-today/
5. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/history-childrens-rights-whose-story
6. https://www.ohchr.org/en/treaty-bodies/crc/background-convention
7. https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention
8. https://www.humanium.org/en/child-rights/
9. https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/children-human-rights-explained
10. https://www.unicef.org.au/convention-rights-child-summary
11. https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/children
12. https://www.ohchr.org/en/treaty-bodies/crc
13. https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2016/11/statement-un-child-rights-experts-universal-childrens-day
14. https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/what-we-do/childrens-rights/united-nations-convention-of-the-rights-of-the-child