Towards an Emancipatory Discourse of Children’s Rights

Rights are tools of empowerment. However, the hegemonic children’s rights discourse, crystalized in the UNCRC, is anything but child empowering because it is indebted to specific Euro-American adult understandings which picture the child as ignorant, innocent and needy and the child’s human rights as a concession granted by adults. From a survey of the relevant literature this paper critiques and pretends to challenge this disempowering conception. If historically the strength of any given right has depended on its condition of being conquered, the paper reframes the dominant discourse from the standpoint of real children, specifically working children, fighting for their rights. The paper thus embraces the experiences of children driving the children’s rights movement and takes steps to advance an emancipatory discourse of their rights where they become legislators by achieving authoritative, norm-creating capacity.