CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
- BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
International law takes special interest concerning children worldwide. This is due to the fact that children are the most vulnerable and powerless members of the society dominated by adults. World leaders believe that children deserve adequate protection so that they can grow to preserve the human race. Most times, children are considered to be the future of any society. The establishment of legal and institutional frameworks were being put in place by world leaders in other to ensure the protection and promotion of the rights of the child.
In the antiquity, nobody gave special protection to children. In the middle age children were considered as small adults. In the middle of the 19th century, the idea appears in France to give children special protection, enabling the progressive development of “minors‟ rights”. Since 1881, French laws included the right for the children to be educated.
During the 1980s, many child rights activists claimed that, as children are human beings and the subjects of all human rights, they did not need a special human rights instrument devoted to them as a group. Yet it is clear from current histories of child rights that children are viewed as objects of rights in a discourse of welfare concern more often than they are recognised as subjects of rights. (Judith 2000) The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is innovative in making it clear that, with respect to international human rights law, children are active subjects. They not only require certain forms of protection in addition to the “normal” entitlements of human rights law, they also require special forms of protection because they are in a vulnerable position, both legally and developmentally. These entitlements include the right to have their opinion taken into consideration when adults take
decisions on their behalf (Article 12), to express their views (Article 13) and to join or form associations to represent their own interests (Article 15).
The modern era of international human rights law can be said to begin with the establishment of the UN system after the 1939-1945 Second World War, specifically with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. The Declaration clearly established the principle that nations that are members of an intergovernmental body, such as the UN, can intervene in the domestic affairs of other states to ensure that citizens’ rights are respected. A number of other treaties followed the Universal Declaration, dealing with different groups of persons and rights. But rights are indivisible. The CRC is only conceivable, and can only be implemented, if it is seen in the context of the international human rights agenda in its entirety. In the Preamble to the Convention this is made clear through reference to preceding human rights instruments. Rights that are not spelt out in the CRC, but which applied to children before it was drafted and adopted, include consideration of their special needs and vulnerability in times of armed conflict, as well as protection against trafficking, exploitative work, torture and prostitution. (Judith, 2000).