We do not have human rights to all things that are good, or even all important good things. For example, we are not entitled – do not have (human) rights – to love, charity or compassion. Parents who abuse the trust of children wreak havoc with millions of lives every day. We do not, however, have a human right to loving, supportive parents. In fact, to recognize such a right would transform family relations in ways that many people would find unappealing or even destructive.
In all actions concerning children … the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration (Unicef, no date)
Article | Right | Category |
---|---|---|
24 | Health care | Provision |
Play | ||
28 | ||
32 | Protection | |
Right to express views and have them taken seriously | Participation | |
Right to freedom of religion | ||
19 | Protection | |
34 | ||
13 |
Article | Right | Category |
---|---|---|
24 | Health care | Provision |
31 | Play | Provision |
28 | Education | Provision |
32 | Protection from economic exploitation | Protection |
12 | Right to express views and have them taken seriously | Participation |
14 | Right to freedom of religion | Participation |
19 | Protection from abuse and neglect | Protection |
34 | Protection from sexual exploitation | Protection |
13 | Right to information | Participation |
insists on a shift from a discourse on greenhouse gases and melting ice caps into a civil rights movement with the people and communities most vulnerable to climate impacts at its heart. Now, thanks to the recent marches, strikes and protests by hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren, we have begun to understand the intergenerational injustice of climate change. (Quoted in United Nations, 2019)
This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! ...You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you. (Thunberg, 2019)