Children’s Rights in the Arab World: A Systematic Review of Legal Frameworks, Structural Barriers, and Reform Trajectories

This systematic review examines children’s rights across the 22 member states of the League of Arab States, with attention to the gap between UNCRC obligations and the Islamic-law reservations states have used to limit their scope. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, sixty-four peer-reviewed studies (2000–2024) were identified through searches of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and JSTOR and assessed using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT). Thematic synthesis covered seven domains: child labor, education, child marriage, armed conflict and displacement, violence and abuse, health and nutrition, and legal reform. The enforcement gap is consistent and sharpest in conflict-affected contexts. The evidence base skews toward Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, and Yemen; Gulf states remain underrepresented. Reform is real but uneven: Tunisia, Morocco, and Jordan show that rights-compatible change within Islamic legal frameworks is possible where political will and sustained civil society engagement coincide.