Who Owns Our Children? A Qui Appartiennent Nos Enfants?

Abstract

The complexities of children's lives are often overlooked in favour of quick sound bites and easy promises. Children's rights are often more slogan than reality. Politicians know that speaking of children's needs and interests grabs attention; it is often too easy to speak of the 'next generation,' but to fail to follow through. And we, as lawyers or human rights advocates or social workers or social-policy makers can fall too easily into the same trap. We must not confuse promises, declarations and conventions of rights with the actualization of rights, whether civil and political, social, economic or cultural, and concrete changes in children's lives.