Martha F. Davis

Child Care as a Human Right: A New Perspective on an Old Debate

SUMMARY A range of international human rights documents recognize the importance of child care for both parents and children, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. While domestic advocates within the United States have long argued for an expansion of government-supported child care, the significance of child cares status as an international human right has not been explored. In other nations, international law has played an important role in spurring governments to expand childcare services. Reframing the child care issue in the United States as a question of international human rights could be an effective way to enlist new allies, posit new paradigms, re-energize the child care debate and shift the domestic focus toward more progressive models.

In a state of becoming a human rights city: the case of Eugene, Oregon

The United States is characterized as ‘exceptionalist’ when it comes to the implementation of international human rights principles and standards (Shulz 2009). The United States has been slow to ratify more than a handful of UN-sanctioned human rights treaties. Moreover, the United States has attached significant ‘reservations, understandings, and declarations’ to those treaties it has signed and ratified which limit the extent to which these treaties are allowed to apply to the United States (Venetis 2011).