Should children have the right to participate in decisions that shape their lives or should they be protected from decision making?

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Should children have the right to participate in decisions that shape their lives or should they be protected from decision making?

Since the implementation of universal children’s human rights, there has been an ongoing debate about whether or not children should be given more control over making decisions. By ‘making decisions’, I mean decisions that directly involve them and their lives. Some believe that by protecting children from making their own decisions. They are being made to be incompetent by the adults making their decisions for them. While others believe that children do not fully understand the consequences of their actions. Therefore they should be protected from having to make their own decisions. Both arguments centre around one fundamental issue, competence.  The question is, when does a child reach the level of competence to make their own decisions? Well that is also debatable. Of course this all leads back to, what the universal children’s human rights are. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the child (UNCRC) came about because all human rights charters dating back from the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, all made mention of the protection of children. However they had yet to indicate how these provisions could be achieved. Alston (1994); Bueren (1995); Ennew (1998), p.152 emphasized that ‘children’s rights are an integral part of the human rights movement’ (Book 1, Understanding Childhood, Chapter 4, p.152). Their rights can never be taken from them. Children’s rights are not separate from human rights, and these rights apply universally to all children no matter where they come from.

The largest charter signing of 191 countries, all except two. The UNCRC is structured around what has been called the four ‘P’s’. Provision rights, Prevention rights, Protection rights and the right to Participation. It states that children have a right to provision whereby the child is provided with everything that will enable them to grow and develop. This includes providing basics such as housing, food, water and also education. Prevention rights include putting systems in place to prevent the abuse or infringement of children and their rights. While protection rights aim to protect children from exploitation and abuse. They are protected by intervention from the state if the adults in their life fail to do so. Participation rights enable or shall we say empower children. Giving them a right to have a say about how their life decisions are made. This gives them a right to hold an opinion and their opinion to be respected (Chapter 4, p.144). Participation rights however can be problematic rights to carry through fully.

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This is because in many cases participation rights tend to clash with protection rights. It can be difficult to decide whether protecting a child is more important than allowing them participation. A good way of explaining this would be by using the case of a boy named Hiep as an example. Hiep is a street boy who lives in Vietnam. He moved away from his disadvantaged home in the country, to work in the city of Hanoi. Hiep was able to earn enough money to support himself and to send a little extra to his struggling family. He also managed ...

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