Violence, Exploitation, and the Rights of the Child

Abstract

Violence against children is a global problem. More than half of the world’s children experienced violence in the past year. Children are subjected to violence in a broad array of spaces, ranging from illicit enterprises such as child trafficking, to labor exploitation, to corporal punishment in schools, to maltreatment in the home. Children’s rights law, including in particular, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is unequivocal: violence against children is a human rights violation. This chapter examines children’s rights law’s response to violence against children. It begins by assessing the nature of the problem of violence against children, summarizing the prevailing framework on violence against children and discussing violence’s harmful consequences. It then examines relevant international children’s rights law. Despite this law, progress in preventing violence against children has been inconsistent. The chapter analyzes key factors that have limited progress on eliminating violence against children, focusing on the persistent lack of regard for children among adults and traditional legal constructs that disadvantage children. This chapter argues that these barriers to successful implementation of children’s rights law are, in fact, obstacles that children’s rights law is uniquely situated to overcome. Paying greater attention to children’s rights law’s capacity to address these and other underlying barriers to child protection can help secure the realization of every child’s right to live free from violence and exploitation and to develop to his or her full potential.