Ellen Desmet

Implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child for ‘Youth’: Who and How?

From various perspectives, an ambiguous relationship between the Convention on the Rights of the Child and young persons emerges. Given the overlap between the target groups of children’s rights policies and youth policies, the current and potential connections between these two policies are explored, in order to assess whether (further) linking these policies could increase the realization of the rights of young persons. The inquiry is carried out at the international and European level (United Nations, Council of Europe and European Union), on the one hand, and within Flanders (Belgium), on the other. Contrasting results appear, calling for a middle ground in the degree of interconnection between children’s rights policies and youth policies.

Integrated Human Rights in Practice

This book aims to introduce concrete and innovative proposals for a holistic approach to supranational human rights justice through a hands-on legal exercise: the rewriting of decisions of supranational human rights monitoring bodies. The contributing scholars have thus redrafted crucial passages of landmark human rights judgments and decisions, ‘as if human rights law were really one’, borrowing or taking inspiration from developments and interpretations throughout the whole multi-layered human rights protection system. In addition to the rewriting exercise, the contributors have outlined the methodology and/or theoretical framework that guided their approaches and explain how human rights monitoring bodies may adopt an integrated approach to human rights law.

Children’s rights law in the global human rights landscape : isolation, inspiration, integration?

Children’s rights law is often studied and perceived in isolation from the broader field of human rights law. This volume explores the inter-relationship between children’s rights law and more general human rights law in order to see whether elements from each could successfully inform the other. Children’s rights law has a number of distinctive characteristics, such as the emphasis on the ‘best interests of the child’, the use of general principles, and the inclusion of ‘third parties’ (e.g. parents and other care-takers) in treaty provisions. The first part of this book questions whether these features could be a source of inspiration for general human rights law. In part two, the reverse question is asked: could children’s rights law draw inspiration from developments in other branches of human rights law that focus on other specific categories of rights holders, such as women, persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, or older persons? Finally, the interaction between children’s rights law and human rights law – and the potential for their isolation, inspiration or integration – may be coloured or determined by the thematic issue under consideration. Therefore the third part of the book studies the interplay between children’s rights law and human rights law in the context of specific topics: intra-family relations, LGBTQI marginalization, migration, media, the environment and transnational human rights obligations.Although there are many and obvious differences between children and indigenous peoples, there are also quite some similarities, especially in how international human rights law and academic research have addressed the claims of these groups. This chapter focuses on three domains in which children’s rights and indigenous peoples’ rights share certain challenges, in order to explore whether and how both branches of human rights law could inspire each other: (i) the demarcation of the personal scope of rights, and the divisions and dichotomies generated by the establishment of categorical human rights; (ii) the way in which indigenous peoples and children have been constructed, especially from a Western perspective, and the consequences thereof; and (iii) participation and consent. I will argue that children’s rights law could draw inspiration from indigenous peoples’ rights law in defining its rights holders, in developing the collective dimension of the right to be heard and in conceptualising the right of children to give consent. On the other hand, an area in which research and practice on both indigenous peoples’ rights and children’s rights should increase efforts, concerns addressing the adverse consequences of idealised constructions.

Inspiration for children’s human rights from indigenous peoples’ rights

Children’s rights law is often studied and perceived in isolation from the broader field of human rights law. This volume explores the inter-relationship between children’s rights law and more general human rights law in order to see whether elements from each could successfully inform the other. Children’s rights law has a number of distinctive characteristics, such as the emphasis on the ‘best interests of the child’, the use of general principles, and the inclusion of ‘third parties’ (e.g. parents and other care-takers) in treaty provisions. The first part of this book questions whether these features could be a source of inspiration for general human rights law. In part two, the reverse question is asked: could children’s rights law draw inspiration from developments in other branches of human rights law that focus on other specific categories of rights holders, such as women, persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, or older persons? Finally, the interaction between children’s rights law and human rights law – and the potential for their isolation, inspiration or integration – may be coloured or determined by the thematic issue under consideration. Therefore the third part of the book studies the interplay between children’s rights law and human rights law in the context of specific topics: intra-family relations, LGBTQI marginalization, migration, media, the environment and transnational human rights obligations.Although there are many and obvious differences between children and indigenous peoples, there are also quite some similarities, especially in how international human rights law and academic research have addressed the claims of these groups. This chapter focuses on three domains in which children’s rights and indigenous peoples’ rights share certain challenges, in order to explore whether and how both branches of human rights law could inspire each other: (i) the demarcation of the personal scope of rights, and the divisions and dichotomies generated by the establishment of categorical human rights; (ii) the way in which indigenous peoples and children have been constructed, especially from a Western perspective, and the consequences thereof; and (iii) participation and consent. I will argue that children’s rights law could draw inspiration from indigenous peoples’ rights law in defining its rights holders, in developing the collective dimension of the right to be heard and in conceptualising the right of children to give consent. On the other hand, an area in which research and practice on both indigenous peoples’ rights and children’s rights should increase efforts, concerns addressing the adverse consequences of idealised constructions.

Editorial Introduction: Children and Young People in Legally Plural Worlds

This thematic section entitled ‘children and young people in legally plural worlds’ builds on a panel that was organised by the guest editors during the 2013 conference of the Commission on Legal Pluralism in Manchester. The panel was conceived as an opportunity to bring together theoretical and empirical contributions reflecting on under-researched issues concerning the relationship between children, children’s rights, and legal pluralism. The papers presented during the panel addressed questions such as how children and young people engage with the plurality of normative orders impacting on their daily life and well-being, what the rights conceptions of children and young people are in different cultural and normative contexts, and what the role and potential of ‘children’s rights’, understood as the human rights of children, are in relation to other (state and non-state) bodies of law. In other words, the theme of the panel was conceptualised in broad terms, covering many areas of research. As the preparation of a publication based on this panel advanced, we decided to focus on the theme ‘children’s rights and legal pluralism’. Although not exclusively, the four articles that follow interrogate how various normative orders interplay with the human rights of children. The first three articles analyse this interplay in the context of judicial proceedings concerning different aspects of children’s lives, such as grandparent grandchild relationships (Simon), child residency arrangements after parental disunion (Lecoyer and Simon), and adoption (Corrin and Mulitalo). More specifically, they describe and reflect on the complexities involved in applying one of the general principles of children’s rights law, the ‘best interests of the child’, when a plurality of normative regimes criss-cross the relationships in which children are embedded. Taken together, the three articles suggest that the implementation of this principle by judiciaries operating in contexts of normative and cultural plurality is problematic, either because they are blind to or reject such diversity (Simon, Lecoyer and Simon), or because the state fails to regulate it appropriately (Corrin and Mulitalo). The fourth contribution by Corradi and Desmet adopts a different entry point to the subject. By presenting a review of the existing literature on legal pluralism and children’s rights, it acts as a backdrop or map against which the other contributions of this thematic section can be located. Common to the four contributions is an understanding of legal pluralism in terms of the multiple normative regimes that co-regulate children’s relationships and entitlements in practice, independently from whether these norms have official status in state law. Such a ‘bottom-up’ understanding of legal pluralism is a crucial matter for children and young people, whose capacity to act in the human rights field is more often than not mediated by various relationships with adults and the norms that apply to those relationships. Hence, the articles often use the terms ‘legal’ and ‘normative’ pluralism interchangeably. This is not intended to deny the social force of state authority, nor its symbolic power. The point is rather that understanding how children’s rights operate in concrete contexts, requires an empirically grounded approach to legal pluralism that

A review of literature on children's rights and legal pluralism

This paper reviews and reflects upon the literature in which childrens rights and legal pluralism stand at the core. This scholarship has mainly addressed three research questions: how global childrens rights standards interrelate with local normative orders and practices; how children as well as justice providers navigate legally plural orders; and how legal pluralism interplays with social change and the realisation of childrens rights. As regards research topics, intra-family relations have received more scholarly attention than the position of children in the wider society. Even though, often implicitly, a variety of theoretical approaches may be discerned, particularly regarding the conceptualisation of childrens rights (e.g. as semi-autonomous or static) and legal pluralism (e.g. as dichotomous or multi-level). In the conceptualisation of children and childhood, a social constructionist approach is predominant. On this basis, we formulate a number of suggestions for future research. It is concluded that further developing the subfield of childrens rights and legal pluralism is worthwhile, not only because of the specificity of the knowledge needed, but also because this may deepen our understanding of the interplay between legal pluralism and human rights more generally.

Walking a tight rope: evaluating the child and youth impact report in Flanders

In Flanders, a child and youth impact report (JoKER) must accompany all legislative proposals based on an initiative of the Flemish government, that have a direct impact on the interests of persons under the age of 25. This article presents the results of the first in-depth evaluation carried out of this impact assessment instrument. Based on multiple data collection techniques (including an electronic survey and focus groups), JoKER was critically evaluated as to its scope, quality, process, support and control, effectiveness and impact. The evaluation required maintaining a balance between various perspectives and tensions. A major challenge concerns the tension between mainstreaming JoKER in the more general regulatory impact assessment (ria), on the one hand, and preserving the specificity of a youth and children’s rights perspective, on the other.