Suffer the Children A Theoretical Foundation for the Human Rights of the Child

In 1973, Hillary Rodham Clinton famously stated that "children's rights" is a slogan in search of a definition, used to bolster various arguments for peace and for specific rights, but without any coherent conception of children as political beings. In 1989, the United Nations established the basis for this definition in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), a document every nation in the world, save the United States, has ratified. Still, human rights theorists, scholars, and jurists continue to disagree as to the theoretical justification for children's human rights.

In Suffer the Children, Richard P. Hiskes establishes the first substantive theoretical foundation for the human rights of children. As Hiskes argues, recognizing the rights of children fundamentally alters the meaning and usefulness of human rights in a global context. Ironically, the case for children's rights, as Hiskes argues, should be seen as the evolution, distillation, or "maturing" of human rights in general. Children's human rights will end the debate about whether groups can have rights because, globally, many rights claims today are precisely group claims, including those from children. Moreover, Hiskes provides a new critical assessment of the United Nations CRC and explores child activism for human rights worldwide--in courts, on social networks, and in public demonstrations--to show how children are already claiming their rights in ways that will fundamentally change the meaning both of rights themselves and of democratic processes. Giving children rights in a way that avoids privileging any single cultural experience of children would make rights no longer a "Western," individualistic idea, but a truly global one.

Richard P. Hiskes is Emeritus Professor of Political Science and Human Rights at the University of Connecticut. He is a political theorist who specializes in human rights theory, especially environmental human rights and the rights of children. He is former Editor of the Journal of Human Rights, Director of the Undergraduate Human Rights Program and Associate Director of the Human Rights Institute at UCONN, and twice elected President of the APSA Human Rights Section. He is the author of many books and articles on human rights and other aspects of political and democratic theory, and his 2009 book, The Human Right to a Green Future: Environmental Rights and Intergenerational Justice, won the 2010 APSA Human Rights Section award for Best Book in Human Rights.