The Child's Right to Development

A comprehensive analysis and innovative, holistic interpretation of the child's right to development.

Noam Peleg (Author)

9781107094529, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 July 2019

262 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.9 cm, 0.51 kg

'This work … is useful for those practitioners working to uphold the rights of children either in government or in the non-governmental and civil society sectors … Peleg's work is a reminder that as human rights practitioners and educators we must continue to build a child-centred pedagogy, one which intentionally strives to amplify the voices of the young rather than regarding what they say as an afterthought. Undoubtedly, this requires work, but it is how we truly reimagine spaces that uphold child rights and child agency.' Marissa A. Gutierrez-Vicario, Human Rights Education Review

This book provides a comprehensive account of how child development and the right to development of children have been understood in international children's rights law. It argues that any conceptions of childhood focussed either on children's future as adults, or on children's lives in the present, overlook the hybridity of children's lived experiences. The book therefore suggests a new conception of childhood - namely, 'hybrid childhood' - which accommodates respect for children's agency and human dignity in the present, in the process of growth, and in the outcomes of this process when the child becomes an adult. Consequently, and building on the capability approach's idea of human development, the book presents a radical new interpretation of the child's right to development under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It offers a comprehensive interpretation of the right to development, which is one of the four guiding principles of the Convention.

Introduction
1. Embedding the protection of 'child development' into international children's rights law
2. Creating the right to development of children
3. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child's interpretation of the right to development
4. Exploring the meanings of human and child development
5. A new framework for analysing the child's right to development
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Family law: children [LNMK], Family law [LNM], Human rights & civil liberties law [LNDC], International human rights law [LBBR], Human rights [JPVH]