The Human Rights of Children

Abstract

A few years ago The Guardian newspaper published an article by Julie Bindel entitled ‘Six Weeks of Suffering’. 1 She argued that school holidays should be cut in half because the presence of children in her space – streets, parks, museums, public transport, restaurants – offends her. Let me quote her: I live in an area where kids ( sic ) are routinely taken to proper restaurants for lunch, but I was here before it became Nappy Valley… There seems to be no escape this summer. Ken Livingstone 2 has made it easier for the little monsters to follow me around London by giving school children free bus travel… There they are, in the museums when you least expect them. Imagine The Guardian3 publishing an article which objected to black people in restaurants or gays in museums! This article was written by the founder of ‘Justice for Women’. You may find it telling that, espousing the position she does in relation to women, she could hold such views about children. You may also be discomforted by the publication of such an article in a liberal newspaper. But, of course, you may not. You may think, as the Canadian philosopher Harry Brighouse does, 4 that it is ‘strange’ to think of children as having rights. Or you may be concerned, as Bruce Hafen puts it, 5 that we are ‘abandoning’ children to their rights. The majority opinion is still, as the most influential of writers of the last generation expressed it, 6 that the only right that children have is to autonomous parents. 7 But if, like me, you are appalled by the sentiments in Bindel's article, you may also ask why such attitudes are still prevalent, even predominant. 8 And you may have noticed the new Equality Act 2010.