Children's Participation and the Promotion of their Rights1

1. This article is based on the first part of a paper entitled Toothless Tigers and Dog's Breakfasts – Enhancing or Minimising Children's Rights to Protection, delivered to the National Association of Guardians ad Litem and Reporting Officers (NAGALRO) Annual conference at the University of Oxford on 14 March 2005 and then at the Socio‐Legal Studies Association Conference on 30 March 2005. The second and third parts of that paper have already been published in Representing Children (Lyon 2005 and Lyon 2006), but the first part, which now appears here, required much greater development and a third version was then given at the International Conference on Childhood and Youth Justice: Choice and Participation at the University of Sheffield 4–6 July, 2006. My special thanks to the referees for their continuing constructive and helpful comments and suggestions and for allowing the extensive amendments of the Introduction to accommodate the publication of The Treasury Policy Review in January 2007, and other events occurring early in 2007.

Abstract

This article questions whether children and young people can be said to have participated in processes relating to the introduction of recent government policy with respect to children and young people and the significance that has been attached to their views. Whilst recognising the undoubted importance of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as an instrument setting out the aspirational standards to be applied when working with children and young people, and its value as an audit tool, the limitations of the Convention should be openly acknowledged. The argument is made, using lessons drawn from decided cases, that greater attention should be focused on the legal rights that children have under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) rather than on the more ephemeral rights conferred by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, in order to achieve more meaningful participation by children and young people in the shaping of laws and policies affecting them.

Keywords:

• Children's rights
• United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
• European Convention on Human Rights

Notes

1. This article is based on the first part of a paper entitled Toothless Tigers and Dog's Breakfasts – Enhancing or Minimising Children's Rights to Protection, delivered to the National Association of Guardians ad Litem and Reporting Officers (NAGALRO) Annual conference at the University of Oxford on 14 March 2005 and then at the Socio‐Legal Studies Association Conference on 30 March 2005. The second and third parts of that paper have already been published in Representing Children (Lyon 2005 and Lyon 2006), but the first part, which now appears here, required much greater development and a third version was then given at the International Conference on Childhood and Youth Justice: Choice and Participation at the University of Sheffield 4–6 July, 2006. My special thanks to the referees for their continuing constructive and helpful comments and suggestions and for allowing the extensive amendments of the Introduction to accommodate the publication of The Treasury Policy Review in January 2007, and other events occurring early in 2007.