| Right is a kind of capacity of self-decision action which is recognized and supportedby society or law and control of others’action.Human rights is a kind of special right,whichis the right with which every person is born.Children’s rights belong to a member of the bigfamily of human rights,which is the rights that children have in view of their specialphysical and mental demand.This kind of rights is different from adults’ rights,which isrecognized by morality,law and custom legitimately. Children’s rights consist of the right toprctection and the right to liberty,which is interdependence each other.There are manydifferences between right and children’s rights,meanwhile, there are some intimaterelationships between them.Childhood is an inevitable stage for the development of everyadult.As a legal terminology,child is defined diversely in different countries. Convention onthe Rights of the Child defines child as the person who is under the age ofeighteen.Children possess many peculiarities which are different from adults,such aschildren’s tender and growth,dependency and relative independentability,immaturity andplasticity,deficiency of liability to encroach and self-protective capability.From theperspective of essence,child is a natural person,social person,immature person,consciousand conscientious person,cultural person,and so on.Children’s status reflects human attitudetowards themselves.In the different cultural background,human attitudes towards childrenare different.But overall,there are mainly four kinds of ideas of influence on children’sstatus which are tradition view,protection view,liberation view and new traditionview.Children have no adequate ability to exercise their rights.Children’s capacity forrights,capacity of disposition and capacity of liability are different from those of adults.Thethoery of mature minor regards those minors who have self-care ability,and can live in thecase of complete or part independence of their parents or guardians as adults.As aresult,they can have access to jural independent personality and have the right to signbinding contracts.From the view of nature, children’s rights both are a kind of human rightsand a kind of legal rights,both are a kind of comprehensive rights and a kind of children’sempowerment.The content of children’s rights consists of general right and special right.The former mainly comprises equal rights,political rights,the freedom of spiritual andcultural activities,personal freedom and personal dignity,which is the same as adults’fundamental rights.The later mainly comprises right to identity, right to grow up in thefamily, right to custody, right to guardianship, right to welfare, right to escape from abuseand neglect, right to work, right to exemption of criminal liability, right to participate andright to play.children’s rights have many general features which is different fromadults’rights,such as physical and mental specificity of subject of right, specificity of thecontent of right,the non-selectivity of right,dependence of right,liability to encroach ofright and specificity of protection of right.The ratification of children’s rights in Human society has experienced a long historicalperiod.Ancient Greece and ancient Rome thinkers showed their deep sympathy onchildren’s misery.Although Middle Ages is regarded as the dark age in the history ofmankind,some scholars have expressed their deep concern for the children’s moralstatus.Rock,Rousseau,Kant,Froebel,Allen Kai and Montessori laid the ideologicalfoundation for final formation of the concept of children’s rights.Then Europe formulatedtheir own project of human rights and charter of children’s rights,and incorporated theConvention on the Rights of the Child into their domestic legal system.Although the UnitedStates don’t join the Convention, they formulated a series of child policies and laws toensure children to enjoy fundamental rights.Human rights consciousness in China has beenenlightened late,the concept of children’s rights is also weak.In the ancient China beforethe end of the Qing Dynasty,children were regarded as the propery of their clan orfamily.As a result,they were not the subject of rights.In constitutional thought,human rightsconsciousness gradually sprout,children’s living conditions in china have beenimproved.After the founding of the People’s Republic of China,the society generallyrecognized that children have independent status.Especially after the Chinese governmentjoining the Convention on the Rights of the Child,they provided system guarantee for therelization of children’s rights by formulating child laws and regulations.The internationalsociety began to pay attention to children’s rights after the “Geneva declaration” rights ofthe child has passed by United States in1924,and then formulated “Universal Declarationof Human Rights”(1948)",“Declaration of the Rights of the Child”(1959),“InternationalHuman Rights Convention”(1966) and “Convention on the Rights of the Child”(1989) anda series of international human rights documents. Thus, children’s rights has been widelyrecognized by the international community.Children act as a special subject of human rights,whom the constitutions of allcountries in the world provide with fundamental rights.From the point of the patterns of constitution expression about children’s rights,which contains special clause of excludingchildren’s rights and special clause of including children’s rights.The constitutions of allcountries not only regulate the scope of the subject of right,the content of right and theconstraint object of right,but also safegurd children’s rights by regulating childallowances,child benefit,special organization and judicial procedure.The basic principles of children’s rights is the guide to action for the children’s legaloperation. The principle of the best interests of child is the highest standards of behaviorwhich the national courts, administrative authorities and legislative institution must followwhen they handle all children’s affairs.Although people have not yet reached a consensuson the specific content of this principle,they incorporated it into the international anddomestic legislation, and they applied this principle to the judicial practice. The principle ofnon-discrimination prohibits to be differently treated under similar circumstances in theabsence of objective justification This principle is of great significance to make childrengrow healthily.The principle of non-discrimination has received the recognition of manyinternational documents of human rights and our domestic legislation, and have beenapplied into related fields in china. Children’s participation is a basic principle of children’srights, this principle has been institutionalized in many western countries such as Scotland,Australia and so on.The principle of children’s participation has won the recognition ofinternational and domestic legislation. Due to the factors of idea and the construction oflegal system, the situation of children’s participation is not optimistic in china,whichdemands us to take some measures to promote children’s participation in China.In China,the protection of children’s special rights including right to birthregistration,right to play,right to health,right to education and right to escape from abusehas its particularity and urgency.These rights have obtained confirmation from internationaland domestic legislation.The right to birth registration is the first children’s rights, which isthe premise and basis of other rights of children.The international children’s birthregistration is not an ideal situation,so the situation of birth registration in china is,wherethere are a huge number of children who are not registered. Right to play is a special rightthat exclusively belongs to children, which is of irreplaceable value to ensure children togrow healthily.The security of children’s right to health is the foundation of realizing theother rights of children,which is facing a serious situation in China, and endanger thephysical and mental health of children.Children’s right to education can promote children’sother rights.As a social right,children’s right to education encountered bottleneck in China’ssystem of judicial relief, which need to be solved fundamentally.Treatment of child abuse isa worldwide problem. The right to escape from abuse can provide children with possible physical and mental development.The protection of all these children’s special rights mustbe taken corresponding improvement countermeasures after basing on examining thecurrent situation of those rights in our country. |
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