Aoife Nolan

Economic and Social Rights, Budgets and the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Recent years have seen an explosion in methodologies for monitoring children’s economic and social rights (ESR). Key examples include the development of indicators, benchmarks, child rights-based budget analysis and child rights impact assessments. The Committee on the Rights of the Child has praised such tools in its work and has actively promoted their usage. Troublingly, however, there are serious shortcomings in the Committee’s approach to the ESR standards enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which threaten to impact upon the efficacy of such methodologies. This article argues that the Committee has failed to engage with the substantive obligations imposed by Article 4 and many of the specific ESR guaranteed in the CRC in sufficient depth. As a result, that body has not succeeded in outlining a coherent, comprehensive child rights-specific ESR framework. Using the example of child rights-based budget analysis, the author claims that this omission constitutes a significant obstacle to those seeking to evaluate the extent to which states have met their ESR-related obligations under the CRC. The article thus brings together and addresses key issues that have so far received only very limited critical academic attention, namely, children’s ESR under the CRC, the relationship between budgetary decision-making and the CRC, and child rights-based budget analysis.

The Battle(s) over Children's Rights in the Irish Constitution

Abstract The paper centres on the battle(s) that have been, and are being, fought over childrens rights under the Irish Constitution. The author assesses whether the Irish Constitution, as it stands, qualifies as a ‘childrens rights constitution’ under which children are afforded special recognition in terms of their rights rather than their welfare. The likelihood that any constitutional amendment proposed in the near future will succeed in bringing the Irish Constitution into the ‘childrens rights’ category of constitution, is considered. The author addresses both the issue of the alleged desirability of a ‘childrens rights constitution’ and the extent to which the Irish Constitution (or any constitution, in fact) can and should protect the various rights and interests of children.

Children's Rights Under Regional Human Rights Law – A Tale of Harmonisation?

This chapter focuses on an area where a high level of harmonisation between international and regional human rights protection is evident: the rights of the child. All of the major regional human rights systems – the African, the Inter-American and the Council of Europe – accord explicit protection to child rights and the key institutions within those systems have engaged directly with such rights in a range of different contexts. The aim of this chapter is not, however, to provide a comprehensive analysis of how regional judicial and quasi-judicial bodies have approached children’s rights. Rather, its focus is on the extent to which the regional systems take into account the key international instrument on children’s rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). In doing so, the authors will consider those entities’ use of the work of the body mandated to monitor that instrument, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.Ultimately, this chapter concludes that the growing reference to, and employment of, the CRC by regional human rights bodies has contributed to an increasing harmonisation of regional approaches to children’s rights. This level of harmonisation is a strong testament to the influence of that instrument given both the diverse challenges faced by children in Europe, Africa and Americas, and the variations in approach to children’s rights in the basic instruments of the regional human rights systems under consideration. Although there are many factors that result in the CRC playing a different role vis-a-vis the work of the various regional mechanisms, it is increasingly clear that the CRC is the tie that binds in child rights protection at the regional as well as the international level.