Scholars from a range of different disciplines explore how best to implement children's rights.

Building on recent human rights scholarship, childhood studies and child rights programming, this conceptual framework on children's rights proposes three key-notions: living rights, or the lived experiences in which rights take shape; social justice, or the shared normative beliefs that make rights appear legitimate for those who struggle to get them recognised; and translations, or the complex flux between different beliefs and perspectives on rights and their codification. By exploring the relationships between these three concepts, the realities and complexities of children's rights are highlighted. The framework is critical of approaches to children as passive targets of good intentions and aims to disclose how children craft their own conceptions and practices of rights. The contributions offer important insights into new ways of thinking and research within this emerging field.

Scholars from a range of different disciplines explore how best to implement children's rights.

A timely examination of the plight of children and youths in developing nations. The chapters strike a balance between diagnostic analysis of the conditions of risk, with prescriptive ideas for approaching and intervening with marginalized children.

This open access edited volume investigates children and youth's deep entanglement in today's major global, national, and local transformations and processes: wherein they are not mere spectators and objects of transformations but instead actively shape them through various social, economic, and political representations. International contributions illuminate the problems that arise when children's rights and participation become a site of contestation and power over who represents whom, what, when, and where. The authors do not provide simple solutions, instead offering an understanding of the fundamental nature of these problems as founded in the application of rights and the nature of representation in modern society. Together, the authors emphasize that child representation must take into account the local and spatial context of how representations of children are discussed, as well as possible discrepancies between local, regional, national, and global processes.

Children's rights law is a relatively young but rapidly developing discipline. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, the field's core legal instrument, is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. Yet, like children themselves, children's rights are often relegated to the margins in mainstream legal, political, and other discourses, despite their application to approximately one-third of the world's population and every human being's first stages of life. Now thirty years old, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) signalled a definitive shift in the way that children are viewed and understood--from passive objects subsumed within the family to full human beings with a distinct set of rights. Although the CRC and other children's rights law have spurred positive changes in law, policies, and attitudes toward children in numerous countries, implementation remains a work in progress. We have reached a state in the evolution of children's rights in which we need more critical evaluation and assessment of the CRC and the large body of children's rights law and policy that this treaty has inspired. We have moved from conceptualizing and adopting legislation to focusing on implementation and making the content of children's rights meaningful in the lives of all children. This book provides a critical evaluation and assessment of children's rights law, including the CRC. With contributions from leading scholars and practitioners from around the world, it aims to elucidate the content of children's rights law, explore the complexities of implementation, and identify critical challenges and opportunities for children's rights law.

Since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) children’s rights have assumed a central position in a wide variety of disciplines and policies. This handbook offers an engaging overview of the contemporary research landscape for those people in the theory and practice of children’s rights. The volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to children’s rights, as well as key thematic issues in children’s rights at the intersection of global and local concerns. The main approaches and topics within the volume are: • Law, social work, and the sociology of childhood and anthropology • Geography, childhood studies, gender studies and citizenship studies • Participation, education and health • Juvenile justice and alternative care • Violence against children and female genital mutilation • Child labour, working children and child poverty • Migration, indigenous children and resource exploitation The specially commissioned chapters have been written by renowned scholars and researchers and come together to provide a critical and invaluable guide to the challenges and dilemmas currently facing children’s rights.