In: Siobhán Mullally and Liam Thornton, "The Rights of the Child, Immigration and Article 8 in the Irish Courts" in Uusula Kilkelly (ed.), ECHR and Irish Law (Bristol: Jordans, 2009), pp. 399-415.
In this commentary, Sabine Witting provides a comprehensive analysis of the Second Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. This commentary critically reflects on the impact of globalisation, digital technologies and the COVID-19 pandemic on the nature, scope and meaning of the Second Optional Protocol since its adoption on 25 May 2000. Apart from analysing a broad range of topics, from online child sexual abuse to surrogacy and 'voluntourism', this commentary highlights the importance of establishing child-friendly transnational collaboration mechanisms, conceptualised through a holistic gender lens and taking into consideration the online-offline nexus of violence against children and relevant Global North-Global South dynamics
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The purpose of this article is to examine the problem of child poverty in Canada in light of Canada's commitments under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. By ratifying the Convention in 1991, Canada was obligated to advance the basic economic security rights of children under Article 27. A particular problem, as Canada recognized, was child poverty. In accord with the Convention, Canada took important measures to overcome the problem. However, child poverty has persisted as a serious problem, putting at risk the exercise of children's rights in ways that are more far-reaching than often thought.
1. Article 12 and child participation -- 2. The nature and scope of Article 12 of the CRC -- 3. Implementing Article 12 in practice -- 4. Child participation in family decision-making -- 5. The voice of the child in family law proceedings -- 6. Listening to children in school -- 7. Listening to children in conflict with the law -- 8. Children's voices in public decision-making -- 9. National human rights institutions and Article 12 CRC -- 10. Interpretational enforcement of the CRC : monitoring the implementation of Article 12 -- 11. Conclusion.
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In April 2018, the US government introduced a 'zero tolerance' illegal immigration control strategy at the US-Mexico border resulting in the detention of all adults awaiting federal prosecution for illegal entry and the subsequent removal of their children to separate child shelters across the USA. By June 2018, over 2300 immigrant children, including infants, had been separated from their parents for immigration purposes. Media reports and scenes of distraught families ignited global condemnation of US immigration policy and fresh criticism of immigration detention practices.
In: Verdasco Martinez , A 2013 ' Strengthening Child Protection Systems for Unaccompanied Migrant Children in Mozambique : A case study of the border town of Ressano Garcia ' United Nations Children's Fund , Florence, Italy , pp. 1-57 .
This research sets out to understand the why, how and with whom of rural-urban internal migration of children to the Mozambique border town of Ressano Garcia. In doing so, it aims to address the overarching research question of how to strengthen child protection systems for unaccompanied migrant children. Research took place at the border town of Ressano Garcia and in the Mozambican capital city of Maputo, between July and September 2012. Following a thorough analysis of the qualitative data, engaging with the current debate on migration and child protection issues, this paper critically assesses the current interconnected 'protective actors' and protection mechanisms and provides recommendations. Under a qualitative child participatory approach, children and their views are placed at the centre of the research. Research participants also include protective actors that are the cornerstone of child protection mechanisms, including: civil society organizations (CSOs) in both Ressano Garcia and Maputo, and government officials at local, district, provincial and central level, thus allowing for a triangulation of sources. ; This research sets out to understand the why, how and with whom of rural-urban internal migration of children to Ressano Garcia, a border town between Mozambique and South Africa. It addresses the overarching research question of how to strengthen child protection systems for unaccompanied migrant children. By identifying children's reasons for migrating, it identifies the main risks they encounter once they start living and working in Ressano Garcia. These include: lack of access to educational opportunities, exposure to child labour exploitation, trafficking and smuggling. This paper argues that child protection systems must respond to the unique situation of migrant children's needs. Child protection and migration policies need to strike a balance between discouraging unsafe migration, which has the potential to expose children to violence, and ensuring that systems are in place for safe migration at all stages of their journey. It provides a set of specific policies to address the needs of unaccompanied migrant children in Mozambique.
In England, unaccompanied child migrants who seek asylum are the responsibility of the local state, who acts as their 'corporate parent'. While these young people are ostensibly supported by children's services in keeping with responsibilities under the Children's Act 1989, in comparison to 'local' children unaccompanied children are disproportionately placed in unregulated, outsourced accommodation. Drawing on data from the Children Caring on the Move research project – including over 180 interviews with unaccompanied young people, frontline workers, accommodation owners and policy makers – I argue that this part of the care system can be understood as a double move of enclosure. First, I argue that claims about the unpredictability of arrivals of unaccompanied children are used as a rationale for the marketisation of children's services, part of an enclosure of what was previously public. Second, I point to the enclosure, and commodification, of unaccompanied children themselves. They not only become a source of profit in this enclosed sector through their statuses as 'child' and 'unaccompanied migrant', but the limited forms of support provided in outsourced and unregulated provision make it more difficult for many to regularise their status before being subject to enforced destitution or deportability as non-citizen adults. The article contributes to efforts to theorise contemporary processes of enclosure in racial capitalism, adds to understandings of the UK's 'asylum market' which to date has focused almost primarily on adult or family migrants, and sheds new light on causalities of care in the UK's marketised and bordered children's services.
This article works toward an expanded reading of the viral child by beginning with the "origin" example of the 2007 viral video known as "Charlie Bit My Finger—Again!" In drawing on theatrical as well as sociological histories of the "priceless" child, it thinks through the evolution of the scriptive, performative, and economic dimensions of children and young people's material and digital media cultures. It argues that the kinds of capital produced by the digital circulation of images of children and young people, as well as the kinds of labour—immaterial, affective, temporal—that those images exploit, reproduce, and transgress both hyperbolize and trouble the increasingly economized cultures of subjectivity and temporality that are experienced by children today.
Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Chapter 1. The Moral Status of Children -- Chapter 2. Taking Children's Rights More Seriously -- Chapter 3. Laws, Conventions and Rights -- Chapter 4. Beyond Conventions-Towards Empowerment -- Chapter 5. The Limits of Children's Rights -- Chapter 6. English Law and the United Nations Convention on The Rights of the Child -- Chapter 7. Children's Rights and Cultural Pluralism -- Chapter 8. Contact With Absent Parents: An Emergent Child Right -- Chapter 9. Do Children Have the Right Not to be Born? -- Chapter 10. The Rights of the Artificially Procreated Child -- Chapter 11. Can Children Divorce their Parents? -- Chapter 12. The James Bulger Tragedy: Childish Innocence and the Construction of Guilt -- Chapter 13. Cleveland, Butler-Sloss and Beyond: How are We to React to the Sexual Abuse of Children? -- Chapter 14. In the Child's Best Interests? Reading the Children Act Critically -- Chapter 15. Removing Rights from Adolescents -- Chapter 16. Sterilizing the Mentally Handicapped -- Chapter 17. Afterword -- Index.
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