The Emergence of Children’s Rights: From Needs to Entitlements

When we think about children’s rights today – the right to education, to healthcare, to be heard – it can feel like these have always been obvious. But the idea that children hold rights, not just needs, is a relatively recent and hard-won development in human history. Understanding how we got here, from a world where children were treated as small adults or property, to one governed by an internationally binding legal framework, matters deeply for anyone working with children – especially those with intellectual disabilities, who are among the most vulnerable.

Why a rights framework matters for children 🔗

There is an important difference between recognising that a child needs food, shelter, or education and recognising that a child is entitled to these things. A needs-based approach relies on the goodwill of families, charities, or governments – it is discretionary. A rights-based framework, by contrast, makes fulfilling children’s basic entitlements a legal obligation. As Tearfund’s development practice guidelines explain, internationally agreed rights are legally binding agreements between states that define their duties and obligations towards citizens, providing a legal basis for holding governments accountable.

This shift in framing is significant. Under a rights framework, if a family cannot provide sufficient food for a child due to drought or conflict, the state has an obligation to step in – the child is not a beneficiary at the mercy of charity, but a rights-holder making a legitimate claim. Accountability moves from being optional to being mandatory. This has direct implications for children with intellectual disabilities, whose needs are often the first to be deprioritised when resources are tight and welfare is treated as charity rather than obligation.

Within a child rights-based approach, children are identified as rights-holders with entitlements, while those responsible for fulfilling those entitlements – governments, institutions, and communities – are considered duty-bearers with obligations for which they are accountable. This structure of claim and duty is what makes rights fundamentally different from welfare.

The historical shift: from miniature adults to rights holders 🔗

For most of human history, childhood was not recognised as a distinct phase of life deserving special protection. Children were treated, in practice, as small adults – expected to contribute economically as soon as they were physically capable. In the 18th century, the arrival of a newborn to a rural family was viewed as a future beneficial labourer, and the right of parents to benefit from the productive capacity of their children was widely recognised in law.

The Industrial Revolution made this exploitation visible and extreme. Children as young as five years old were paid a pittance to perform dangerous jobs in factories and mines, working the same 12-hour shifts as adults. In 1832, children made up around one-third of the workforce in Britain’s factories, working in conditions that reformers described as hazardous to their physical and mental development. Disturbing accounts in factory inspectors’ reports provoked reformers across Europe to begin campaigning for legislation regulating child labour – among the earliest organised efforts to recognise that children deserved different treatment from adults.

These reform movements were driven largely by philanthropy, not by any formal recognition of children’s rights. The idea that society owed children something legally enforceable had not yet emerged. That would come in the aftermath of a global catastrophe.

Eglantyne Jebb and the first declaration of children’s rights 🔗

World War I left millions of children across Europe orphaned, malnourished, and entirely without protection. British social reformer Eglantyne Jebb, who founded Save the Children in 1919, was a pioneering humanitarian and one of the most influential champions of children’s rights. After witnessing photographs of children starving in post-war Germany and Austria – kept hungry even after the armistice by Allied blockades – she took action, distributing leaflets in London’s Trafalgar Square and eventually directing the newly founded Save the Children Fund toward international advocacy.

Jebb understood that emergency relief alone was not enough. In 1923, she attended a meeting of the International Save the Children Union in Geneva with a plan for a “Children’s Charter,” resulting in her drafting the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. This document, built around five clear principles – children’s right to development, to assistance in distress, to priority during times of crisis, to protection from exploitation, and to an upbringing that instils social responsibility – was deliberately framed not as a plea but as a statement of entitlement.

The Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child was adopted by the League of Nations in 1924, and it culminated in the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, which became a legally binding convention ratified by almost every country in the world. The Declaration constituted the first document dedicated to the active and distinct promotion of children’s rights worldwide – marking the first time an intergovernmental body formally recognised that adults had responsibilities toward children as a matter of principle, not charity.

The path to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 🔗

The momentum set in motion by Jebb’s Declaration continued through the 20th century. The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, which in Article 25 entitled mothers and children to special care and assistance and social protection. Building on this, the UN adopted a new, expanded Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959, extending Jebb’s original five principles into ten.

By 1979 – designated the International Year of the Child – it was clear that declarations, however powerful symbolically, were not enough. They were aspirational, not enforceable. Poland proposed the drafting of a legally binding convention, and after a decade of negotiation and drafting involving governments, NGOs, and child welfare experts worldwide, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 20 November 1989.

The UNCRC is the most widely ratified international human rights treaty in history, with 196 countries as signatories. Unlike the earlier declarations, it is legally binding – ratifying governments are required to implement its provisions, report on progress to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, and be held accountable when they fall short. The Convention transforms children from passive objects of charity into active rights-holders with agency and voice.

The four general principles of the UNCRC 🔗

The UNCRC contains 54 articles, but four of them are identified as General Principles – foundational values that underpin every other right in the Convention. These General Principles help construct a perception of children and childhood where children are equal to their adult counterparts, and they apply in every context where decisions affecting children are made.

Non-discrimination (Article 2) 🔗

Discrimination against children is one of the primary reasons their rights are violated. Article 2 establishes that every child, without exception, is entitled to the rights set out in the Convention – regardless of their race, religion, disability, family background, or any other status. For children with intellectual disabilities, this principle is especially critical: it is a direct legal prohibition on any form of differential or lesser treatment.

Best interests of the child (Article 3) 🔗

Article 3 states that “in all actions concerning children whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interest of the child shall be a primary consideration.” This means that the child’s welfare is not just one factor among many in decision-making – it must be the primary one. It applies to courts, schools, hospitals, and government policy alike.

The right to life, survival, and development (Article 6) 🔗

Article 6 goes beyond simply protecting children from being killed. Children have the right not just to survive, but to develop to their full potential. The Committee on the Rights of the Child interprets “development” as a holistic concept, embracing the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral, psychological and social development. This is the article most directly relevant to early childhood intervention and education for children with disabilities.

The right to express views (Articles 12 and 13) 🔗

Article 12 guarantees children’s status as individuals with rights instead of objects of pity. It requires that children who are capable of forming their own views have the right to express them freely in all matters affecting them, with those views given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity. This is a radical departure from the historical view of children as passive recipients of adult decisions – and it has significant implications for how educators and caregivers engage with children with intellectual disabilities.

The four categories of children’s rights 🔗

The 41 substantive rights articles of the UNCRC are commonly grouped into four thematic categories, sometimes called the four pillars. The Convention on the Rights of the Child comprises four main pillars: the right to survival, the right to protection, the right to development, and the right to participation.

Survival rights 🔗

These are the most fundamental: every child’s right to life, healthcare, adequate nutrition, clean water, and a safe place to live. These are covered under Articles 6, 24, and 27, and they place the obligation squarely on governments to provide or enable access to basic services that allow children to live and thrive.

Development rights 🔗

Development rights recognise that children need more than physical survival to flourish. Every child has the right to education that helps them develop their personality, talents, and abilities, and that prepares them for life in a free society (Articles 28 and 29). The CRC also encompasses the right to play (Article 31) and access to information – rights that are often overlooked for children with disabilities but are essential to their holistic development.

Protection rights 🔗

Protection rights shield children from abuse, neglect, exploitation, and violence. These include protection from exploitation (Article 36) and healthcare (Article 24). For children with intellectual disabilities, protection rights are particularly vital given their heightened vulnerability to abuse and the historical tendency to institutionalise rather than support such children.

Participation rights 🔗

Perhaps the most philosophically significant category, participation rights recognise that children are not simply passive recipients of adult decisions. They have the right to be heard in matters affecting them, to access information, and to take part in their communities and societies. This category directly challenges the old view of children as property or dependents, repositioning them as active members of family and community life with a legitimate voice.

A new view of the child 🔗

Taken together, the UNCRC’s principles and categories represent a fundamental reimagining of who children are and what they are owed. The Convention is universal – these rights apply to every child, and it entitles every child to claim them. The child is no longer property, no longer simply a future adult in training, no longer a beneficiary of adult charity. They are, from birth, a rights-holding member of the human family – with entitlements that governments are legally obligated to protect and fulfil.

For practitioners in early childhood education and development, particularly those working with children with intellectual disabilities, this framework is not background theory. It is the operating system. Every decision about a child’s education, care, and participation should be filtered through the questions the UNCRC raises: Is this in the child’s best interests? Does it support their fullest development? Have we genuinely listened to the child? And are we, as duty-bearers, being held accountable?

What do you think? How does understanding children’s rights as legal entitlements – rather than acts of goodwill – change the way you approach your work with children? And in practice, how meaningfully are the participation rights of children with intellectual disabilities being upheld in the educational settings you’re familiar with?

References

1. https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/footsteps/footsteps-61-70/footsteps-66/from-needsbased-to-rightsbased-approaches
2. https://www.civilsocietyacademy.org/post/think-feel-and-act-rights-based
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4. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/history-of-child-labor-in-the-united-states-part-1.htm
5. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2216/child-labour-in-the-british-industrial-revolution/
6. https://ehne.fr/en/encyclopedia/themes/material-civilization/work/childwork-in-europe-19th-century
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10. https://hhr-atlas.ieg-mainz.de/articles/stornig-geneva
11. https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/history-child-rights
12. https://www.unicef.org.uk/what-we-do/un-convention-child-rights/
13. https://thelaw.institute/human-rights-evolution-concepts-and-concerns/historical-evolution-childrens-rights-league-to-today/
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15. https://archive.crin.org/en/home/rights/themes/general-principles.html
16. https://www.unicef.org/armenia/en/stories/four-principles-convention-rights-child
17. https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/what-we-do/childrens-rights/united-nations-convention-of-the-rights-of-the-child
18. https://www.unicef.org/thailand/what-is-crc
19. https://www.unicef.org.au/united-nations-convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child