A Rights-Based Approach with Children in Street Situations

Abstract

In order to highlight the discrepancy between the ideals of children’s rights and the actual experiences of children in street situations, the capability approach examines the transformation process of formal freedoms (rights enshrined in the UNCRC) into real freedoms (effective functionings). Different combinations of personal and social factors and their interactions mediate this process. The recursivity of the different translations of ideals into practices, whereby children’s choices have a retroactive effect on their entitlements, is highlighted. Human rights are a fictional symbolic order born out of the historical construction of individualism and humanism pervading perceptions of the child in street situations: the delinquent child, the victim child and the failing child. The General Comment on CSS is a symbolic structure reflecting the dominant entrepreneurial habitus pervading child rights’ governance. There is a need for an inclusive approach to the rights of the child which would make space for other modes of action, and accordingly, more participatory public policies.