The Best of Both Worlds for Children's Rights? Interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights in the Light of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has always operated successfully as a regional mechanism of human rights protection. Now, following the ECHR's incorporation into the legal systems of the vast majority of Council of Europe States, including, most recently, the United Kingdom, its potential to influence law and policy can be realized at the domestic as well as the regional level. 1 The Convention's scope for enforcing and protecting the rights of children is not immediately evident given that it contains few specific references to the rights of the child. However, the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights have made a considerable contribution to European law and practice in the areas of private and public family law, the protection of children from abuse and neglect and, most recently, juvenile justice and detention. 2 They have done this, it is submitted, through a variety of [End Page 308] inventive methods of interpretation, 3 including the practice of drawing on the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). 4 While it is not apparent that the Court (or the Commission, up to its abolition in 1998) has followed a consistent strategy to refer to the Convention on the Rights of the Child in all children's cases, it has been making such references with increasing frequency and with significant effect. This article analyzes the Court's approach to interpreting the ECHR in the light of the CRC and identifies the features of each treaty, which encourage this approach. It examines two specific areas of the Court's practice in this regard--physical punishment and juvenile justice--and concludes with some suggestions as to how this approach might be developed further in a way that offers greater scope for the protection and promotion of children's rights in Europe.