Evolving Conceptions of Children’s Rights: Some Reflections on Muslim States’ Engagement with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Abstract

The present chapter explores evolving perceptions of children’s rights as reflected in Muslim state party practice in light of responses to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The only human rights treaty making specific mention of Islam and ratified by all Muslim states, the CRC, also enjoys near-universal ratification by all UN member states (the only exception being the USA). But this unanimous ratification by Muslim states is accompanied by reservations, some of which have been entered in the name of Islamic law and sharia, raising questions of compatibility between the CRC and Muslims’ perceptions of children’s rights. Reservations to multilateral treaties such as the CRC are one of several indicators of Muslim state practice and of Islam’s plural legal traditions in international law; others include, but are not confined to, country reports submitted to the CRC Committee, as well as a range of ‘Islamic’ human rights instruments. Assessing the first two indicators—reservations and country reports—against the backdrop of Islamic legal traditions and international conceptions of human rights, this chapter bears the following questions in mind: Does membership of the CRC per se constitute active engagement with and ownership of its provisions on the part of Muslim states? If so, is there a discernible or potential paradigm shift in perspectives in this area as a result of this engagement with the CRC as evidenced through reservations, withdrawals of reservations, and country reports? And to what extent do children’s rights as set out in the CRC resonate with comparable conceptions within Islam’s plural legal traditions—especially in relation to freedom of religion, thought, conscience, and the adoption of children? The chapter will focus on two of the CRC articles most widely reserved by Muslim states—Articles 14 (freedom of thought, conscience, and religion and 21 (adoption). It argues that children’s rights are an evolving concept with changing content and connotations in classical Islamic law, in Muslim state practice, and in regional and international child rights instruments. Vague and fluid formulations of various aspects of children’s rights both in the CRC and in classical conceptions of the Islamic legal traditions make it a malleable concept that enables diverse cultures and traditions to implement it in their particular contexts.