'Vernacularising' the Convention on the Rights of the Child: Rights and Culture as Analytic Tools

Abstract

Whereas the Convention on the Rights of the Child ('the CRC') provides a progressive framework capable of normative transformation, the challenge for children's rights advocates is how to translate the treaty's prescriptions into robust protection for children everywhere. A key indicator of success in this endeavour is the level and sustainability of appropriation of the CRC's principles in the local polities that have subscribed to its normative framework. In this article, I adopt culture and rights as tools for analysing the contexts, contests, processes and prospects that define such transformation.

Governing Children’s Rights in Global Social Policy—International Organizations and the Thin Line Between Child Protection and Empowerment

“…Accordingly, contemporary engagement with children's rights in the context of global governance reconceptualizes the relationship between these norms and global and domestic institutions, policies and practices as more ambivalent and contentious, assuming that the meaning of such norms cannot be inferred and understood independently of the context (local, cultural, linguistic, political, historical, institutional etc.) in which they are debated and enacted (Wiener 2018;Kaime 2010). Following this twist in the debate on children's rights, scholarly interest has shifted toward regional human rights treaties and institutions (such as the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the ASEAN Commission on the Rights of Women and Children, the European Court of Human Rights, or Independent National Human Rights Institutions) as vital ingredients of a stronger cultural embedding of core principles and ideas codified in the CRC.…”

Introduction: Three Decades of Children’s Rights Law

“…172 Kaime puts an accent on 'concrete opportunities for participation' in children's rights agenda-setting as a driver, noting that their denial 'only serves to alienate many capable individuals from the process of "vernacularizing" children's rights'. 173 When children and their parents have these opportunities, families and communities are 'empower[ed] '…' to take on the challenge of promoting and protecting children's rights'. 174 From a legal perspective, the thorny question is whether and which red lines there are for these democratic iterations and vernacularisation processes.…”