Am I not a child? Palestinian child rights’ violations in Cathryn Clinton’s A Stone in My Hand (2002)

Abstract

Taking the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) as a framework, this article tackles the numerous violations of children’s rights in Palestine that are reflected in Cathryn Clinton’s young-adult (YA) novel, A Stone in My Hand (2002). The article aims to illustrate how Clinton’s novel, like other contemporary YA fiction, explores major child rights violations in Palestine, such as arbitrary death, violent treatments, mental violence, illegal detention, torture of children, restrictions of movement, lack of health insurance, denial of good education, and poverty and unemployment. For this purpose, the article is divided into two parts. The first sheds light on the genre of YA fiction and the reasons behind its present interest in children’s rights worldwide, in general, and Palestine in particular, with examples of such literature. The second part discusses several articles of the UNCRC including, but not limited to 6, 19, 24, 27, 28, 31, 37, 38, and illustrates how Clinton’s novel elucidates the ways in which these articles are clearly violated.