Vaiko teisės – fundamentalių žmogaus teisių dalis, taikoma savitai asmenų grupei. Tai silpnoji visuomenės narių grupė, dėl nesubrendimo ir pažeidžiamumo reikalaujanti kitų pagalbos savo teisių užtikrinimui. Darbe aptariamas vaiko teisinis statusas, subjektiškumo ribos. Remiantis tarptautiniais teisės aktais bei tarptautine praktika, analizuojamos vaikystės pradžios ir pabaigos nustatymo problemos. Darbo pagrindą sudaro išsami kelių fundamentalių vaiko teisių analizė. Visų pirma, analizuojama teisė išsaugoti savo identiškumą, ypač atkreipiant dėmesį į įvaikinto vaiko galimybę įgyvendinti šią teisę. Įvaikio teisė žinoti savo biologinius tėvus nėra leidžiama daugelio valstybių praktikoje, o tai sukelia teisės išsaugoti savo šeimos ryšius pažeidimą. Atsižvelgiant į tai, kokia esminė tarptautiniu mastu laikoma šeima vaiko auklėjime, analizuojamas teisinis šeimos statusas: teisės, pareigos ir atsakomybės ribos auklėjant ir vystant vaiką. Aptariamos skirtingos “šeimos” sampratos ir praktinė būtinybė, siekiant geriausių vaiko intersų, šeimos santykius nustatyti pagal faktines aplinkybes. Aktualus alternatyvių vaiko priežiūros formų klausimas. Darbe dėmesys skiriamas įvaikinimo santykiams, ypatingai atkreipiant dėmesį į tarpvalstybinių įvaikinimų aspektus. Vaiko pilnaverčiam vystymuisi esminė yra apsauga nuo smurto. Darbe analizuojamas ypatingai problematinis šios teisės aspektas – fizinių bausmių taikymas. Fizinės bausmės patenka į draudžiamo smurto formas ir reglamentavimo spragos... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Protection of the Rights of the Child: Problems of Regulation on International Plane The rights of the child constitute a part of fundamental human rights and are applicable to a specific group of individuals. The immaturity and vulnerability of these individuals requires interference of international society to ensure and protect their rights. The final paper views legal status of the child and the scope of child’s capability. The problems of the beginning and the end of the childhood are analised in accordance with international laws and international practice. The final paper is based on the analysis of several fundamental rights of the child. The paper includes the right to protect identity with a specific reference to the rights of adopted child. The right of the adpotee to know his/her biological parents is not guaranteed by legal systems of many states and this lacuna leads to the infringement of the right to preserve family relations. Regarding the importance of the family in child’s upbringing, the legal status of the family is analised, including rights, duties and the responsibilities of the family while educating and developing the child. The paper reviews the different concepts of ‘family’ and highlights a practical necessity to define the family accordingly to factual circumstances. Important question of the alternative forms of child’s care focuses on adoption with a special reference to the aspects of inter-country adoption. The effective protection against... [to full text]

This thesis concerns the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (‘the CRC’) in Indonesia: The chasm between theory and practice. Despite the enactment of several laws and regulations aimed at protecting the rights of the child, Indonesia’s implementation of children’s rights remains very limited. The theme of this thesis is that, despite the existence of adequate written laws, a state can fail to achieve an effective implementation of human rights, as exemplified by Indonesia. This thesis will focus on the impact of the rule of law on the holistic well-being of children, a group that Indonesia has acknowledged plays ‘a strategic role’ and is in a ‘unique position [to ensure] the continued existence of the nation’. The development of the rule of law and its impact on the implementation of the CRC in Indonesia will be compared to Australia, a state where the CRC has been much better implemented. There is an inextricable link between the rule of law and human rights. The prevailing view is that the rule of law does not depend on written laws; the rule of law is more about the extra-legal aspects of a society, such as culture, socio-economic factors and political factors. In the absence of the rule of law, human rights can only be selectively implemented and enforced. The rights of the child are a global human rights issue, which is particularly pertinent to Indonesia, a nation with a poor record for implementing children’s rights. Children’s rights are well established in international law, largely due to the adoption of the CRC. The CRC has provided the greatest contribution to the field of children’s rights and will serve as the focus of this thesis. Apart from being the most universally ratified human rights convention in history, the CRC expressly recognises a range of children’s rights including civil, political, socio-economic and cultural rights. More importantly, the CRC shifted the responsibility for implementing children’s rights from parents and local communities to State Parties. The CRC is thus an advanced tool for assessing the standard of children’s rights internationally and for implementing change, and will be used to compare the current status of children’s rights in Indonesia and Australia. Arguably, the issue of children’s rights is complex and the implementation of children’s rights requires a multifaceted approach. This thesis will conclude with recommendations on how Indonesia can move forward to achieve a better implementation of children’s rights.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was unanimously adopted in 1989. It was hoped that the Convention would have a positive impact on all children however, despite a country ratifying the Convention and proclaiming to have laws in the interests of children it is still possible for that country to fail in the attempt to implement children’s rights effectively. This can clearly be seen in Kurdistan, Iraq where implementation of children’s rights remains limited. With the continuing violence in Iraq, children’s rights have been somewhat neglected and as with many such situations children are the innocent victims. Ensuring and improving the rights of the next generation of Iraq is vitally important at a time when the country is going through important changes and re-generation. This thesis gives information on the historical background of the UNCRC and looks at its substantive provisions in detail, it then goes on to compare the implementation of children’s rights in Kurdistan and the UK. The thesis highlights methods of implementation in both countries and looks at ways in which some of the Convention’s articles are written into law. The thesis concludes with recommendations on how Kurdistan can move forward to achieve better implementation of children’s rights.

Denna studie belyser några svenska statliga myndigheters genomförande av FN:s konvention om barnets rättigheter. Ambitionen är att fördjupa förståelsen av och få ökad insikt om betydelsefulla förutsättningar vid ett implementeringsarbete sett ur ett systemteoretiskt perspektiv. Studien baseras på semistrukturerade intervjuer med myndighetsrepresentanter. Genom framställande av myndigheternas hierarkiska nivåer: ledarnivå, organisationsnivå och kontextnivå, skildras respektive nivås betydelse och medverkan under konkretiseringen av konventionen. Studien indikerar att en kombination av information, yttrande och förståelse mellan de olika nivåerna, är av central betydelse beträffande realiserande av Barnkonventionen.

<p>On November 1989 the <strong>Convention on the Rights of the Child </strong>was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Today more than 20 years later the convention is ratified by all countries in the world except the USA. A question asked is however if the convention after 20 years of development work has in fact accomplished some positive effects for children around the world?</p><p> </p><p>The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in selected states and to reach this aim some questions need to be answered:</p><p> </p><ol><li>What do the selected states do to realize the <strong>best interest of the child</strong>?</li><li>What do the selected states do to guarantee all children’s right to<strong> survival and development</strong>?</li><li>Do all children in the selected states have the same right to <strong>health and health services</strong>?</li><li>Do all children in the selected states have the same <strong>right to education</strong>?</li></ol><p> </p><p>The material studied in this thesis is those reports that are to be sent periodically to the Committee on the Rights of the Child by all states. The result of this study shows that the Convention on the Rights of the Child has made some positive progresses when it comes to the situation of the child in the world. In the selected states of this study the awareness of the Rights of the Children is noticeable and according to the periodic reports the states continue to work and develop the implementation of the convention.</p>

Thesis advisor: M. Brinton Lykes / Most recent figures indicate that approximately one in five children in the United States is poor (Children’s Defense Fund, 2010; Moore et al., 2009). Thus, the United States ranks considerably below other Northern Hemisphere nations in indices of both child poverty and child well-being (Rainwater & Smeeding, 2003; UNICEF, 2007). Moreover, while the United States has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), this treaty has been central in reframing policy and practices towards reducing child poverty in some other Northern Hemisphere nations. Many authors and activists have suggested that US nonratification of this Convention is based on “American exceptionalism.” This paper examines these claims – and counterclaims – and explores, through comparisons with several other Northern Hemisphere nations, how the Convention on the Rights of the Child, if ratified and implemented through US policy and practice, could play a significant part in tackling child poverty in this nation. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: International Studies Honors Program. / Discipline: International Studies.

The right to participate and express a view is an intrinsic right afforded to all human beings, regardless of age (Lundy, 2007). Explicitly, Articles 12, 13, 14 and 15 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) grant participatory rights to children and young people in decision-making. One of the forms of participation academics and practitioners have studied over the past decades, the engagement of children and young people in participatory processes, is moving away from the understanding of children as passive recipients of research to active participants. However, literature has paid scant attention to research led directly by children and young people (Thomas, 2015). Child-led research is understood, as starting definition from literature, as an approach in which children and young people are involved in all stages - from planning, fieldwork and analysis to dissemination. The aim of this research is to critically explore how the process and outcomes of children and young people's participation in their own child-led research contributes, positively or negatively, to decision-making processes in the context of international development programmes. The research questions are: Question 1: What are children and young people's motivations for, expectations of and experiences with engaging in their own child-led research as a way to influence decision-making? Question 2: What are the processes of child-led research that positively or negatively influence decision-making? Question 3: In what ways does child-led research influence decision-making? (And why and how do they do so?) This research project used a case study approach to examine two cases where children and young people claimed they conducted child-led research. The first, Bekaa and Irbid, investigated the research conducted by a group of children and young people on issues relevant to their situations as refugees in the host countries of Lebanon and Jordan. The second, Dhaka, reviewed child-led research focused on the lack of birth certificates issued for Bangladeshi children and the possible effects of not having this legal registration. A group of children and young people who are members of a Children's Parliament in Dhaka led this project. The research participants for this project are defined as (1) the children and young people, aged 12 to 18 (when I interviewed them), who are associated with World Vision programmes and engaged in the child-led research projects within their constituencies in the Irbid and Bekaa and Dhaka case studies and (2) the adult professionals who acted as facilitators of child-led research projects and those who worked in the design of these projects or dissemination of their findings. These participants were those who were best suited to provide the information needed as they were fully involved in the child-led research projects and had in-depth knowledge to contribute answers to the research questions. This project adopted several methods for data collection, including focus groups, semi-structured interviews, observations and documentary review. The study followed ethical research guidelines to ensure the safety, rights, dignity and well-being of both the children and young people and adult participants (Morrow, 2009). The research took into account the special considerations required to gain informed consent, ensure confidentiality and anonymity, acknowledge the cultures of the research sites, and refrain from presenting information that may potentially harm participants (Marshall and Rossman, 2006). The findings of the study show that the child-led research approach is considered an adequate participatory approach that creates spaces for children and young people to engage in their own research and influence change based on their findings. Thus, this approach enabled participants to gather together and pursue collectively a research project in which they were able to explore issues about their lives using research methodologies that were appropriate to their experiences, abilities and expertise. This conversion, however, highlights a variety of tensions around the understanding and legitimacy of child-led research. Findings from this study supports the view that child-led research generates empirically grounded knowledge, which produced through data collection and personal experiences of the young researches and its analysis as a whole. Findings also reveal that the young researchers' motivations and expectations were to make an impact on their own lives, as well as the lives of their peers and change a situation that they perceived as unfair. Findings show that the adult facilitators played an important role in facilitating the young researchers but not managing them. However, this study evidenced some tensions between participation and protection rights. The study found manifestations of power amongst the children and young people during the child-led research projects, which were based on age, gender, religion, language and ethnicity. This confirms children and young people can replicate power relations within their participatory projects, which are deeply embedded in their traditions and cultures. Findings show that child-led research has different levels of impact; on decision-making and in the individual lives of the young researchers. This is connected to the contexts where children and young people conducted their research, which was conducive in one case study and more challenging in the other case. Overall, the findings of this study contribute to the body of literature that challenges the dominant conceptualisation that children and young people are unable to conduct their own research. Instead, the findings of this research project contribute to the study of children and young people's participation by providing different perspectives on the debate around the children and young people's abilities and motivations to engage in their own child-led research projects. The findings contribute to knowledge about the nature of child-led research as an approach that supports children and young people in their struggle to participate in society. These findings contribute to the substantial gap of understanding about what is knowledge and expertise by exploring the ways in which children and young people conduct their own research and create knowledge with the aim of making a change in society. Specifically, the findings provide empirical evidence of the impact that their work has had on policy and practice and their personal lives.

Despite being a strong advocate for children’s rights in the international community, Sweden has received critique from the Committee on the Rights of the Child regarding the high number of children who have been removed from their families and that are currently living in foster homes. Previous research has not dealt with the issue of children’s rights in foster care placement processes in Sweden, nor has it included Sweden in discourse analyses on children’s rights, or sufficiently explored the relationship between discourse and implementation of the UNCRC. I use theories on discourse and translation in order to provide a comparative analysis of the articulations of children’s rights relevant for foster care placement processes in the UNCRC, and on the national and local level in Sweden. The analysis points to both similarities and differences in the discourses and identifies six aspects of the Swedish discourse that make certain activities in foster care placement processes possible, desirable and inevitable.

The thesis highlights the vulnerability of the child and, thereby, high priority of the children's rights, stress the importance of effective legal structures to support children and to eliminate violence against them. The necessity of the beatings-prohibiting law, which absence inhibits to implement Lithuania’s international commitments, is discussed. The attention is drawn to the problems associated with the frames of the childish age. The thesis sees all forms of violence against children as a violation of children’s rights: violation of their right to personal integrity, to respect for their human dignity, to their right to privacy, their right to enjoy maximum chances of a healthy development and so on.

Thesis (MSocSc)--University of South Australia, 1996