The Best Interests Principle: Towards a Reconciliation of Culture and Human Rights

Alston, Philip

doi:10.1093/lawfam/8.1.1

Cited by 161 publications

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“…The convention has been criticized for embedding individualist values that are not fully applicable to collectivistic societies (Alston 1994). China provides a relevant case in point, because although it ratified the UNCRC without issue, research that has been conducted in Chinese welfare institutes has demonstrated a disjuncture between the individualist values embedded in the document and actual implementation at a local level.…”

Section: Explainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Importing Western Childhoods into a Chinese State-Run Orphanage

Wang

2010

Qual Sociol

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Since the early 1990s the Chinese government has allowed foreign humanitarian non-governmental organizations to aid children residing in official state-run orphanages. As one aspect of a larger research project on child abandonment and forms of orphanage care in contemporary China, this article examines an innovative state-civil society partnership of a Western infant special care unit housed within a large official state-run institution. The "Tomorrow's Children" special care unit, funded and managed by middle-class Western volunteers, uses First World medical practices and universalistic ideologies of children and childhood to care for the institution's most severely ill and disabled children. This article utilizes ethnographic methods to discuss conflicts over children's best interests that arise between Western volunteer employers and the local working-class and poor Chinese caregivers who are expected to implement the imported practices. I contend that disagreements over appropriate childcare hinge on cultural and class-based understandings of childhood and differential access to social and financial resources. This research grounds discussions of globalization in a detailed case study by exposing the tensions and negotiations that occur at the local level in processes of transnational exchange.

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Section: Explainsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Importing Western Childhoods into a Chinese State-Run Orphanage

Wang

2010

Qual Sociol

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“…As Panter-Brick points out in her introductory article, although the International Convention on the Rights of the Child mandates intervention in a child's best interests, it purposely leaves open the sort of intervention called for (see also Alston, 1994). In practice, however, social agents directing the intervention tend to reduce the Convention's spirit to their own ethnocentric values.…”

Section: Child Rights and Adoption In An Anthropological Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropological Perspectives on Problematic Youth

Fonseca¹

2002

Reviews in Anthropology

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“…• The convention has been described as the most important formulation of all the principles relating to the protection of children; it is drafted in such a manner that the "child is more the object than the subject of rights". 46 The best interest of the child principle is also reflected in the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. 47 The principle evolved against an historical background of conflict between parents over the upbringing of their children and of j claims by the state to control the private lives of individuals.…”

Section: Rights Of Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of the 1992 Constitution on Family Rights in Ghana

Daniels¹

1996

Journal of African Law

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One of the important characteristics of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992, is the prominence it gives to the constitutional protection of the rights of men, women and children who live for a larger part of their lives as families. Although there are passing references to the family, that word is not defined by the Constitution, but the absence of a definition need not be regarded as evidence of non-recognition of the concept of family in Ghana society. Few will disagree widi the proposition that the basis of every society from the most primitive to the most complicated is the family. As an institution it is of great antiquity.

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The Best Interests Principle: Towards a Reconciliation of Culture and Human Rights

Cited by 161 publications

References 0 publications

Importing Western Childhoods into a Chinese State-Run Orphanage

Importing Western Childhoods into a Chinese State-Run Orphanage

Anthropological Perspectives on Problematic Youth

The Impact of the 1992 Constitution on Family Rights in Ghana

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