Balancing the Rights of the Child and the Rights of Parents in the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how the relation between parents' rights and children's rights took shape in the drafting of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with a special interest for this relation in the matter of education. By means of the perspective elaborated by T. H. Marshall of citizenship rights as composed of civil, political, and social rights, questions about what kind of right education is and who owns the right to education is addressed. The main empirical source used in the analysis is the UN working group's annual reports, which account for the process in which the different articles were formed. The analysis shows that the main challenge to emerge during the drafting process with regard to the relation between the rights of parents and their children seems to be that of a balancing of the civil and political rights of the child and the civil rights of the parents. In the working group's discussions about education the social right of the child to education was confronted with, and stood against, the civil right of the parents. The wording of Article 28 on the right to education changed several times during the drafting, and in the final version the contradictions that had been present in the elaboration process concerning the rights of the child and the rights of parents in the matter of education became invisible, since the article only expresses the social right of the child to education.

Ann Quennerstedt is a senior lecturer in the Department of Education, Örebro University, S-701 82 Örebro, Sweden. Her areas of interest are educational policy, issues of children's rights in education, and curriculum studies. Her publications include the dissertation Kommunen–en part i utbildningspolitiken? [The municipality as a participant in educational policy] (2006), two chapters in the book Skolan som politisk organisation [The school as a political organization] (Pierre, 2007, ed.), two chapters in the bookVadå likvärdighet?[What about equivalence?] (2008), which she also has co-edited together with Tomas Englund, and an article from that project together with Tomas Englund in Journal of Curriculum Studies (2008).