EditorialThe ethics of children's rights

Journal of Global Ethics, 2019

The international community agrees that protecting the needs and interests of children is a fundamental endeavour. However, the road through which this should be achieved is less clear. Should universal norms guide how children's rights are implemented? Or should children's rights be adapted to the particular social environments and cultural traditions in which children are embedded? This article takes the International Convention on the Rights of the Child as a starting point to analyse a fundamental philosophical conflict between universalist and embedded approaches to global justice. It explores the diverging interpretations of and critiques to the universalist and embedded commitments in the Convention, and develops an in-depth analysis of the benefits and harms that both positions may have on the child population. It argues that, despite the seeming opposition between these two positions, they share a common concern with protecting children from cultural domination. This commonality allows the article to devise a reading of the Convention that can aspire at universality while being receptive to the embedded claims. It considers that the best road to overcome this conflict is through the direct inclusion of children within the decision-making process.

International Journal of Play, 2013

Disasters, 2001

The issue of children's rights has become key to human rights-based international security strategies. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) is being operationalised in complex political emergencies. Children's rights now inform humanitarian principles. Universal concern for children is viewed as transcending political and social divides and able to mobilise societies to confront social problems and prevent war. The operationalisation of child rights is accompanied by the development of psycho-social programmes to rehabilitate the child victim. Critically analysing the implications of the children's rights regime for the right to selfdetermination, the paper unpacks the assumptions underlying children's rights and psycho-social intervention. The paper begins by examining the conceptualisation of the rights-holding subject universalised under the UN Convention and then goes on to consider Article 39 on the right to psycho-social intervention.

Journal of Language, Technology & Entrepreneurship in Africa, 2010

Public Law and Human Rights, 2005

In an ever more converging world that is accustomed to the phenomenon of globalization, two forces, one in economics and another in human rights, are more prominent than others. Human rights have, since the 50’s, increasingly gained influence and scope and become a yardstick whereby State actions are measured. The ethical repercussions of human rights are profound and, even though they lack forceful machinery for full implementation, States have consistently shown sensitivity to evaluations of their human rights practices. This itself has motivated them to implement a variety of policies to distance themselves from condemnations of their practice. Due to the theoretical and practical importance of this issue, it is necessary to analyze the ethical basis of human rights. In this paper, a brief description of different ethical positions is provided, followed by an evaluation of the ethical basis of the international system of human rights, drawing upon certain elements of this system.

THE AGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS, 2020

The consolidation of relations of global society requires the progressive establishment of a global legal system, consisting of a system of rules-precisely, human rights-as the source and evaluation criteria of positive national rights. This essay aims to contribute to some extent using reflective dialectical methodology, establishing logical-argumentative criteria, based on the dialogue between authors to exercise a critical reflection of the official narrative on the universality of human rights, in addition overcoming the universalism/relativism dichotomy eurocentricaly established by a theory of human rights between universalism and cultural relativism. Introdution There are strong criticisms of the attempts to create a world political order based on the defense of human rights, allowing international organizations and major powers to implement a centralized policy of "humanitarian" intervention, situated above the sovereignty of States, using even of war resources if necessary. In this line of argument, there are those who accuse the West of using "human rights rhetoric" to cover up their true political and economic interests and, through that discourse, impose its policies on the rest of the world. The process leading to the creation and consolidation of human rights is contemporary to the expansion of Europe and the West over the whole world and inextricably linked to this process and its contradictions. If, in the so-called West, the consolidation of some fundamental rights was the result of many struggles and conflicts and wars, non-European countries excluded from this process since the beginning and not infrequently participated as victims. The approach to the issue of human rights comes as a more tortuous issue to jurists faced with dilemmas that have assumed an enormous degree of importance with the intra-frontier and international community and which, at the same time, have not yet achieved unity of thought that allows its organization to ensure universal protection. It is, therefore, relevant to the establishment of a set of universal human rights to try to find, at least, a minimum set of guarantees capable of assuring the dignity of the human person. The very notion of dignity is problematic for the solution of this impasse, as each country, and within each of these countries, each culture sheltered by them, tends to establish its own conception of human dignity. To discuss a theory of human rights necessarily leads to a reference to the juridical theory of this class of rights, enshrined by a range of treaties, conventions and

Th is essay argues that children's rights will adequately transform societies only when the very concept of "human rights" is reimagined in light of childhood. In this case, human rights would be understood as grounded, not in modernist ideas of autonomy, liberty, entitlement, or even agency, but in a postmodern circle of responsibility to one another. Th is "childist" interpretation of rights is constructed by examining various forms of child-centered ethical theory in Western history; their impacts on major human rights theories of the Enlightenment and today; alternative visions implied in twentieth century international children's rights agreements; new theoretical groundings arising out of postmodern ethics; and the possibility of human rights as truly including all humanity.