Thesis (doctoral)--Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1996. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 219-229).

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Queensland, 2005. / Includes bibliography.

Despite its immense personal significance, procreation is an inherently other-regarding endeavor. By its very nature, the decision to procreate is the decision to bring into existence another morally considerable being, one who will be exposed to the full range of harms, benefits, and risks that accompany a typical human life, and one who cannot by its nature ever consent to being born. Moreover, when this decision is undertaken in a community of persons, it is also a decision to affect the lives of others in a host of profound (if often underappreciated) ways, from its effects on population size and environmental sustainability, to its consequences for a community's distribution of resources. In many cases, of course, these interests coincide: adults need children for their parenting projects, societies need citizens for the maintenance of their institutions, and children themselves are often happy to have been brought into existence. However, as a burgeoning literature is beginning to demonstrate, the various interests that are implicated by procreative decision-making can also come into conflict as well, and in ways that raise basic questions of justice. This thesis explores five of these questions, and in so doing, seeks to contribute to our understanding of the normative significance of procreation. Chapter One considers the relationship between procreation and child welfare, asking what role (if any) prospective children's interests play in limiting the scope of the right to procreate. Chapters Two and Three consider the relationship between procreation and parenthood, asking whether the act of creating a child generates special rights and/or obligations to parent that child. Chapter Four considers how the significant costs of procreation and parenting ought to be distributed through society, asking whether parents are responsible for paying the full cost of their childrearing projects, or whether childrearing costs should be shared in some way among parents and non-parents alike. Finally, Chapter Five considers our moral obligations to orphaned children, asking whether it is permissible to create new children in conditions where there are already existing children in need of parental care. While numerous positions are defended on each of these interrelated questions, one general conclusion runs through all of them: rather than being viewed as something that is immune from moral scrutiny, or as something that individuals have an unqualified right to do, procreation ought to be viewed as the site of potentially conflicting interests that must be carefully balanced against one another.

There is growing concern over online privacy in today’s digital worlds, in part due to the nature of social media, which encourages the disclosure of personal information. Such concerns have resulted in a significant amount of research, so far focused on adults’ and teenagers’ perceptions of privacy and privacy management. This study aims to explore how children perceive online privacy. It addresses three research questions: RQ 1: What are children’s views of online privacy? RQ 2: What are parents’ views of online privacy? Do their views on privacy influence how they deal with their children’s privacy? RQ 3: What are the benefits and disadvantages of different Internet parental mediation strategies for children’s online privacy? Twenty-six semi-structured one-to-one interviews and ten focus group sessions were conducted with fifty-seven pupils aged 9 to 11 years old (Primary 6 and Primary 7), from one school in Scotland. Additionally, 8 parents were interviewed to understand how their perceptions of privacy influenced their Internet parenting strategies. This study has three overarching findings. The first overarching finding is related to children’s and parents’ views about the Internet as an unsafe place, occasionally leading parents to deploy restrictive and monitoring Internet parental mediation strategies. Second, children view privacy as more difficult to achieve online than offline for two main reasons: (1) the Internet is a ‘bigger space’ populated by a massive number of ‘people’, most of whom they do not know nor have they ever seen (‘strangers’), and (2) there are certain difficulties in managing the privacy settings of social networking sites. The third finding is that trust, autonomy and privacy are interrelated. Trust reduce privacy concerns, encouraged for two-way information sharing between children and parents, with an expectation that parents will be able to help identify potential and also unexpected online issues, and necessary advice and safety precautions can be taught to children. As a result, children will potentially be able to manage their online activities in an increasingly autonomous way. Trust is important not only in interpersonal relationships, but also for building confidence for contexts in which we do not have any prior knowledge, such as with strangers or with the providers of online platforms.

The dissertation traces events that contributed towards a climate where the status of children changed from property to that of person status with the concomitant recognition of children's rights. Social conditions in England, America and France from late preindustrial times to the early twentieth century were investigated. The United Nations' role in establishing children rights documentation and an evaluation of these d~μrpents in terms of the educational implications thereof were described and discussed. The African perspective towards international children's rights documents events was outlined while the attempts of Africa to address the unique needs of the African child were detailed. In the light of the changing social orientation in the Republic of South Africa, children's rights advocacy in South Africa was reviewed. Criteria for evaluati-ng documents addressing the needs of children were proposed and based on the findings of the study, recommendations regarding the direction of children's rights advocacy were advanced. / M. Ed. (History of Education)

This study primarily sets out to examine the cultural practice of child marriage in Africa with a focus on the comparative study of South Africa and Nigeria. This practice has been prohibited in a number of international human rights instruments such as the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Right on the Rights of Women in Africa. However, overwhelming statistics show that the overall prevalence of child marriage in Africa is still very high and if current trends continue, Africa will become a region with the largest number of the global share of child marriages, by 2050. Different interconnecting factors promote and reinforce child marriage which makes this practice very complex. The challenge of cultural traditional practices and religious beliefs that promote child marriage in Africa are evaluated in this study. The complexities surrounding these cultural practices mainly relate to the conflict that exists between adhering to customs and traditional practices, and promoting the practical implementations and enforcement of human rights standards within communities. In particular, the age at which most girls are given out in marriage conflicts with the minimum legal age of marriage, lack of free and full consent to marriage and the mixed legal system, which mainly comprises of customary law, Islamic law and common or civil law and legislation, that often conflict with one another in most African States. Discussions on these contradictions, as in the case of child marriage, often lead to a seemingly endless debate between the universality of human rights and cultural relativism within African societies. Therefore, this study bears heavily on the debate and relationship between culture and human rights, and the extent to which they can be reconciled in order to achieve a realisation of the fundamental rights of the girl-child. A qualitative research method based on an extensive literature analysis from different disciples is adopted. In addition, is a comparative study of South Africa and Nigeria which seeks to provide insight into the nature and extent of the practice of child marriage, as well as evaluate the adequacy, effectiveness and shortcomings of national legislations that relate to the rights of a girl-child in the context of child marriage, in both jurisdictions.

M.A. / A child cannot be treated like an adult in many way. Therefore, the approach towards children in all respects of human life are totally different from that of adults. In the field of rights too, the child is vulnerable and often is unaware of his rights given the age, let alone fighting for them. While an adult often fights for his rights, a child requires some sincere person in authority to identify the rights of children, and implement it for them. This thesis aims to introduce to the scholar the intricate and careful approach a society and an individual should have towards that sensitive child. This being the case, children's rights are sometimes manipulated against them by their guardians or those having direct access or influence over them . The severity of this abuse can be gauged from the fact that, whereas the damage of an external attack can be ascertained, the damage left by internal abuse of children cannever be ascertained, and is thought to leave lifelong physical as well as emotional scars. The need to protect children against such a background in this day and age is as acute as ever. The necessity of a work of this nature fills the void in the human rights arena towards defenceless children and provides ammunition to combat abuse, while not actually delving into the aspect of childabuse. The main thrust of this thesis is to highlight the attitude of Islam towards children from the pre-Prophetic times of the Holy Prophet of Allah, Muhammad ibn `Abdullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, to modern times. To what extent has the shari`ah of Islam attached importance to the identifying and implementing of children's rights, and for that matter, what is the true status of a child in Islam to be accorded with such numerous protection and rights. It may be argued that this thesis would have been much more fruitful had the aspect of child-abuse been also included. In response, child-abuse is another dissertation of its own and by only educating on the rights of children, child-abuse can be easily identified if these are denied or withheld from any child. It can be safely said that in this fast changing times, the adage of the jungle law survival of the fittest most aptly applies. Not so with the case of children, who have not the makings and capabilities of surviving in a world which they expect their very abusers to reveal to and make comfortable and safe for them. Those in authority got to protect them, and reveal a generation of children untarnished by an abusive background or badly illusioned mode of thinking.

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Magister Legum - LLM / Although the concept of human rights is very much accepted as part of human existence throughout the world today, there is still much controversy surrounding the idea of rights for children. The Constitution, however, not only recognises the fact that like all other members of society, children are capable of being bearers of human rights but emphasises also the special position of children in society by granting them specific rights in the Constitution. Health rights are particularly important for children as the entitlements and obligations created by such rights are necessary for children to realise their full potential. In this thesis the entitlements and obligations attached to children'shealth service rights in the COnstitution are explored. / South Africa