Abstract
Abstract Any discussion on children’s socio-economic rights should not overlook their means of fulfilment; namely, the principle of progressive realisation and the legal duties arising therefrom. This article argues that from a children’s rights perspective, this principle has remained legally and operationally underdeveloped by the Committee on the Rights of the Child. This can be seen from their failure sufficiently to engage with, and address, the obligations imposed by progressive realisation in their General Comments and in their Concluding Observations on state practice issued under the Convention’s reporting process. This article argues that the cumulative consequence of these failings is that the Committee has peripheralised this important legal obligation within children’s rights scholarship and has ultimately undermined its ability to achieve its full legal potential in enhancing children’s socio-economic rights. In advocating for the promulgation of a revised General Comment on the General Measures of Implementation, it demonstrates how children’s rights can meaningfully reconnect with the principle in a more consequential way.
Highlights
IntroductionDespite its status as a as ‘a relatively young and evolving field of international law’ (Kilkelly and Liefaard, 2019: 618), children’s rights law has
Despite its status as a as ‘a relatively young and evolving field of international law’ (Kilkelly and Liefaard, 2019: 618), children’s rights law has via free access reclaiming progressive realisation exercised considerable influence on international, regional and domestic law and practice (Doek and Liefaard, 2014)
This article argues that the cumulative consequence of these failings is that the crc Committee has peripheralised this important legal principle within its treatment of children’s rights, thereby undermining its ability to achieve its full legal potential in enhancing children’s socio-economic rights
Summary
Despite its status as a as ‘a relatively young and evolving field of international law’ (Kilkelly and Liefaard, 2019: 618), children’s rights law has . Emerging at a time when post-Cold War political and ideological debate surrounding the very purpose of human rights, and socio-economic rights, was at its most intense (Vierdag, 1978: Craven, 1995: Palmer, 2009: Palmer, 2007), progressive realisation signifies the degree of legal and practical latitude which states are afforded in their efforts to realise such rights in light of the economic disparities and resource constraints which exist within and between them Fredman argues this generates a ‘temporal dimension’ (2018: 64) to the realisation of such rights in that their fulfilment becomes aligned with the economic capacity of the state in question. Before turning to byrne consider these, it is first necessary to unpack the core features which underpin the principle and guide its application in practice
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