Children’s Agency: The Struggles of the Powerless

Abstract

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989, had several forerunners. The Geneva Declaration, adopted by the League of Nations in 1924, recognized the existence of rights specific to children. The 1959 UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child (UNDRC) had ten points, two of which are highly relevant to the treatment of children in out-of-home care. Point 6 specified that children had ‘the right to understanding and love by parents and society’, and Point 9 expressed ‘the right to protection against all forms of neglect, cruelty and exploitation’. The UNCRC is constructed around the so-called three Ps: provision, protection and participation (Cantwell, 1993), the last of which had not been included in the two former declarations, which had highlighted the weakness and vulnerability of children.