Wide scope

The Convention covers the whole range of human rights. Traditionally, these have been classified as civil and political on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural on the other. Although reference is made to this classification in article 4 of the treaty, the substantive articles themselves are not explicitly divided in this way. Indeed, the whole thrust of the Convention is to emphasise the inter-connected and mutually-reinforcing nature of all rights in ensuring what UNICEF terms the "survival and development" of children. In this respect, it can be more useful to describe the range of rights covered by the Convention as the three "Ps": provision, protection and participation. Thus, essentially, children have the right to be provided with certain things and services, ranging from a name and nationality to health care and education. They have the right to be protected from certain acts such as torture, exploitation, arbitrary detention and unwarranted removal from parental care. And children have the right to do things and to have their say, in other words to participate both in decisions affecting their lives and in society as a whole.

In bringing together all these rights in a single cohesive text, the Convention sets out to do three basic things:

to reaffirm, with regard to children, rights already afforded to human beings in general through other treaties. Some of these rights, such as protection fom torture, are non-controversial in terms of their applicability to children. Others, like freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and the right to social security, gave rise to heated debate during the drafting process as to whether or not, and under what conditions, children could and should be the explicit beneficiaries. Consequently, reaffirmation was by no means a superfluous exercise, but a very necessary means of underlining the fact that children are human beings too.

to upgrade certain basic human rights in order to take account of the special needs and vulnerability of children. An obvious example here is that of acceptable conditions of employment, where standards must be tighter for children and young people than for adults. Another is the conditions under which children may be deprived of their liberty.

to establish standards in areas that are pertinent only, or more specifically, to children. Safeguarding the child's interests in adoption proceedings, access to primary education, prevention of and protection from intra-familial abuse and neglect, as well as the recovery of maintenance payments, are among the child-specific issues addressed by the Convention.