A Global Review of Children's Visibility in Constitutions

Abstract

Based on a study of the world's constitutions, this article argues that while children have some constitutional visibility, they are rarely regarded as persons with agency in a constitutional sense. Their rights, as laid down in the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child (crc) of 1989, are poorly reflected in the constitutional texts, which potentially has significant implications for the attention to children's rights, and for the possibilities to demand accountability for failures of rights implementation. The study includes data derived from the Comparative Constitutions Project website, which is jointly administered and updated at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and the University of Chicago, USA. The included constitutions cover 190 of the 193 states that are full UN members, and three non-UN members. Based on qualitative data analysis, we identified 19 themes relevant to children's rights across countries. Although the large majority of countries articulate specified rights for children, many fewer include provisions to account for the enforceability of these rights.