Th.--Droit--Paris, 1936.

Violence against children is a common phenomenon that is spread all over the world and always existed through the centuries. The present work will define the different forms of violences that children are victims of, present the causes which lead to these types of adult behaviors and the consequences on the child. The situation of two countries of our interest will be compared: France and Sweden. One will go through their history in term of infant violence, the laws which contributed to develop the rights of children and the actual situation in both nations. A personal investigation will be included in the work to have direct answers from both a French public and a Swedish one. This will allow us to have an idea about the actual way of thinking in both countries. The problems that France as well as Sweden face to fight for better children care will be mentioned, such as the difficulties people or different institutions have to alert the specialized organisations on a case of child mistreatment. The aim of this work is to compare France and Sweden and see if the hypothesis that violence is still largely spread in France and almost disappeared in Sweden is true. By analysing all the points mentioned earlier, one will eventually confirm that both countries are in totally different places concerning child violence, Sweden being the first nation to forbid any form of violence on children and France being the last one on date. One will notice that French people need to change many different points of their system as well as their way of thinking, while Swedish people need to continue their efforts to fight for this topic.

Les droits de l’enfant constituent un domaine juridique relativement récent et toujours en construction. Ils sont aujourd’hui souvent déclinés dans une perspective dichotomique se balançant entre les droits-protection, qui visent à secourir l’enfant vulnérable, et les droits-libertés, qui s’appuient sur son besoin grandissant d’autonomie. Face à cette tension théorique, les décideurs, notamment les juges, se prêtent à un jeu continuel de mise en balance des droits et intérêts dans un équilibre variant à la lumière des contextes. À partir du constat de la dualité de l’approche moderne des droits de l’enfant, nous effectuerons un détour du côté de l’étude de la régulation sociojuridique, et ce, afin d’apporter un éclairage nouveau sur notre champ d’études. Nous étudierons alors l’évolution du phénomène régulatoire depuis le régime moderne vers le régime dit « post-moderne ». À la faveur d’un glissement épistémologique dans l’appréhension des phénomènes vers l’étude dialectique de leurs interactions, le régime de régulation sociojuridique post-moderne est associé à une figure réseautique s’articulant autour du droit réflexif, de l’État propulsif, du juge équilibriste et du justiciable, nouvel acteur de la scène régulatoire. De la présentation de ces différents pôles, nous dégagerons cinq composantes qui constituent, selon nous, la nouvelle matrice des interactions régulatoires : la négociation, la flexibilité, le pluralisme, la complexité et l’incertitude. Finalement, ce régime de régulation sociojuridique post-moderne constituera la grille d’analyse à travers laquelle nous reviendrons sur les droits de l’enfant. Disposant de nos nouveaux outils d’analyse, nous entendons, dans notre dernière partie, approfondir les traits fondamentaux des droits de l’enfant, peut-être en découvrir d’autres, tenter d’apporter un regard différent sur ce champ juridique et explorer les perspectives d’ouverture qui se dessineront avec lui. Pour ce faire, nous reviendrons tout d’abord sur les principes fondateurs de l’intérêt de l’enfant, puis de sa participation aux décisions qui le concernent, afin de les décliner sous l’angle des interactions post-modernes. Enfin, nous terminerons en nous arrêtant sur un champ plus spécifique des droits de l’enfant, la protection de la jeunesse, et userons de notre grille d’analyse dégagée du régime de la régulation post-moderne et de la matrice qui caractérise ses interactions, pour en proposer des recommandations. / Children’s rights are a relatively recent legal field, which is still under construction. They are often presented in a dichotomous perspective, oscillating between protection-based rights, which aim to help vulnerable children, and freedoms-based rights, which are based on their growing need for autonomy. Faced with this theoretical tension, decision-makers, especially judges, lend themselves to a continuous game of balancing rights and interests with results varying in the light of the contexts. Based on the observation of the duality of the modern approach to children’s rights, we will study socio-legal regulation in order to shed new light on our field of study. Moreover, we will study the evolution of the regulatory phenomenon from the modern regime to the so-called "postmodern" regime. Thanks to an epistemological shift in the apprehension of phenomena towards the dialectical study of their interactions, the post-modern socio-legal regulation regime is associated with a network structure articulated around reflexive law, the propulsive state, the balancing judge and the citizen. From the presentation of these different poles, we will identify five components which constitute, in our opinion, the new matrix of regulatory interactions: negotiation, flexibility, pluralism, complexity and uncertainty. Finally, once this postmodern socio-legal regulatory regime is established, we will use it as the analytical grid through which we will return to our study of children’s rights. With our new analytical tools in hands, we intend, in our last part, to deepen the fundamental features of the rights of the child, perhaps to discover others, to bring a different perspective to this legal field and to explore opening avenues that will emerge with it. To do this, we will first come back to the founding principles of the best interests of the child, then of his participation in decisions that concern him, in order to decline them under the angle of post-modern interactions. Finally, we will conclude by focusing on a more specific field of the rights of the child, the youth protection, and will use our analytical grid drawn from the regime of post-modern regulation and the matrix that characterizes its interactions, to offer recommendations.