The Rights of Refugee Children and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Jeanette A. Lawrence, Agnes E. Dodds, Ida Kaplan and Maria M. Tucci
Additional contact information
Jeanette A. Lawrence: Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne VIC 3010, Australia
Agnes E. Dodds: Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture, Melbourne VIC 3122, Australia
Ida Kaplan: Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture, Melbourne VIC 3122, Australia
Maria M. Tucci: Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture, Melbourne VIC 3122, Australia

Laws, 2019, vol. 8, issue 3, 1-22

Abstract: Refugee children are identified as rights-bearers by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), but their rights are not uniformly honored in the policies and practices of contemporary states. How the CRC’s safeguards for refugee children’s rights are honored depends partly on what it means to be ‘a refugee child’ and partly on how the claims of refugee children’s rights are recognized, respected, and implemented in international and national legal and bureaucratic systems. We examine the CRC’s affirmation of the rights of the child and analyze the CRC’s articles in relation to the rights related to the life circumstances of refugee children and state responsibilities. Following an analysis of resistance to the CRC’s mandates by contemporary states, we relate refugee children’s rights to their refugee and developmental experiences and argue for repositioning refugee children into the center of protection dialogue and practice, internationally and nationally.

Keywords: refugee children; children’s rights; children’s agency; UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; developmental trajectories; refugee trajectories (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 E61 E62 F13 F42 F68 K0 K1 K2 K3 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/8/3/20/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/8/3/20/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlawss:v:8:y:2019:i:3:p:20-:d:262816

Access Statistics for this article

Laws is currently edited by Ms. Heather Liang

More articles in Laws from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().