NEW ARTICLE: Researchers Jill Duerr Berrick, Siri Gloppen, Larissa Cristina Margarido, and Marit Skivenes have recently investigated children’s constitutional visibility. The study titled “A Global Review of Children’s Visibility in Constitutions” is published in The International Journal of Children’s Rights. The paper analyses constitutional texts from 190 out of 193 full UN member states and 3 non-UN member states.
Current Literature Gap and Methods
The research aimed to fill in the literature gap in the area of law and policy, as the theme of children and children’s rights in constitutions is underexplored. Furthermore, the paper presents a global perspective on children’s place in a country’s important legal instrument, albeit with some variations in the relevance of constitutions for the implementation of children’s rights.
The study uses data derived from the Comparative Constitutions Project website. The project data is jointly administered at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and the University of Chicago, USA.
Using the concept of children’s visibility, which derives from O’Mahony (2019) and Habashi et al. (2010), the study operationalises the concept in three steps. First, identifying if the texts mentioned children and/or children’s rights in a way that is relevant in the context of the constitutional text. Second, examining the thematic contents. Third, classifying the child provisions into three categories of basic human rights.
Constitutional Themes Classification under Three Human Rights Categories
The study identified 19 constitutional themes about children and categorised 16 of them under three basic rights areas: 1) Civil rights; 2) Political rights; 3) Social, Economic, and Cultural rights. First, civil rights encompass eight key themes: abuse or maltreatment, special protection by the state, employment, special judicial rights, discrimination, the child’s best interest, disability, and life. Second, political rights encompass two themes: name and nationality, and participation. Lastly, the social, economic, and cultural rights encompass seven themes: the rights to education, development, health or healthcare, family life, services, adoption, and disability. The remaining three themes—the concept of children, CRC inclusions, and children’s duty to parents—were not included because they did not fall within the areas of basic rights.
Future Research and Practical Implications
The findings provide an important first step in comprehensively understanding children’s rights and status in a given country, showcasing the range and scope of variation and possibilities as outlined in the state constitutions. While the constitutions used in the study have been translated into English, and although there may be language nuances that require a respective understanding of the original language, this also opens up possibilities for potential research endeavours to complement this study and enrich the discussion on children’s constitutional visibility.
The article is open-access. For further detailed explanations and arguments of the research, we invite you to read the article from the following link.
- Habashi, J., Driskill, S. T., DeFalco, P. L. and Lang, J. H., “Constitutional Analysis: A Proclamation of Children’s Right to Protection, Provision, and Participation”, The International Journal of Children’s Rights 2010 (18(2)), 267–290.
- O’Mahony, C., “Constitutional Protection of Children’s Rights: Visibility, Agency and Enforceability”, Human Rights Law Review 2019 (19(3)), 401–434.
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