Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Why Economic and Social Human Rights?
- I CORE RIGHTS
- II NONDISCRIMINATION
- 7 The Rights of the Child to an Adequate Standard of Living: Applying International Standards to the U.S. Case
- 8 Achieving Women's Economic Rights, in Policy and in Practice
- 9 Statelessness and Economic and Social Rights
- III META
- Index
- References
7 - The Rights of the Child to an Adequate Standard of Living: Applying International Standards to the U.S. Case
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Why Economic and Social Human Rights?
- I CORE RIGHTS
- II NONDISCRIMINATION
- 7 The Rights of the Child to an Adequate Standard of Living: Applying International Standards to the U.S. Case
- 8 Achieving Women's Economic Rights, in Policy and in Practice
- 9 Statelessness and Economic and Social Rights
- III META
- Index
- References
Summary
A society that possesses sufficient resources for all children and allows some of its children to go without necessary health care, food, and education is failing in its moral duty (Woodhouse, 2008, p. 40).
Introduction
The idea that children have economic and social rights has been articulated in international law since the 1920s, when the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child was drafted by the League of Nations (1924) and the International Labour Organization created standards for child labor. The landmark children's human rights treaty, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC 1990) underscores that children are rights bearers, despite not having reached the age of majority for full citizenship. Thus, the full range of human rights, including social, economic, cultural, civil, and political rights that states are obligated to respect, protect, and fulfill for adult citizens, are also to be accorded to children.
State ratification of the CRC is nearly universal, and efforts to implement the treaty at the country level have been considerable in the past twenty years (Todres 2011). Yet, neither the Committee on the Rights of the Child nor state parties to the CRC have adequately addressed the question of children's economic and social rights and eliminating child poverty as a core obligation of states. In the past few years, however, interest has grown among children's rights advocates and the Committee on the Rights of the Child to address children's rights to an adequate standard of living.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The State of Economic and Social Human RightsA Global Overview, pp. 175 - 203Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013
References
, , and , 2010. “U.S. ratification of the CRC and reducing child poverty: Can we get there from here?” Child Welfare 89(5): 159–175.Google Scholar
and , 2010. “Measuring the U.S. health care system: A cross-national comparison. Commonwealth Fund,” Issues in International Health Policy, June.
, , and , 2008. “TANF child-only cases: Identifying the characteristics and needs of children living in low-income families,” Journal of Children and Poverty 14(1): 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and , 2002. “Living on the edge: Examination of people attending food pantries and soup kitchens,” Social Work, 47(3): 267–277.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
., 2009. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Background and policy issues, Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service.Google Scholar
., 2008. “Measuring children's rights: An alternative approach,” International Journal of Children's Rights 16: 545–563.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , , and , 2009. TANF reauthorization round II: An opportunity to improve the safety net for women and children, New York: Legal Momentum.Google Scholar
., 2009. “Ratifying the Convention amidst the messy cultural politics of American childhood (editorial),”Childhood 16(4): 435–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, 2005. “The right of the child to development,” in and (Eds.) Children's human rights: Progress and challenges for children worldwide, 9–29, Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.Google Scholar
and (Eds.), 2005. Children's human rights: Progress and challenges for children worldwide, Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.Google Scholar
., 2001. “How U.N. conventions on women's and children's rights undermine family, religion, and sovereignty,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, No. 1407, February 5, 1–21.
, 2009. “America's children: Key national indicators of well-being.” Retrieved from .
Food Research and Action Center, 2011. Retrieved from .
and , 2009. “Child poverty in upper-income countries: Lessons from the Luxembourgh Income Study” in S.B. Kamerman, , and (Eds.) From child welfare to child well-being: An international perspective on knowledge in the service of policy making, 339–370, New York: Springer.Google Scholar
., 2006. “Building a social movement for America's children,”Journal of Children and Poverty 12(1): 21–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, 2010. The uninsured, a primer: Key facts about Americans without health insurance, Menlo Park, CA: Kaiser Family Foundation.Google Scholar
and, 2003. “Child and family policies in an era of social policy retrenchment and restructuring,” in and (Eds.) Child well-being, child poverty, and child policy in modern nations: What do we know? Revised edition, 501–526, Bristol, UK: The Policy Press.Google Scholar
, 2011. “State and local commissions as sites for domestic human rights implementation,” in and (Eds.) Human rights in the United States: Beyond exceptionalism, 89–110, New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
., 2011. “U.S. poverty: Past, present and future,” The Nation, March 22.
, 2009a. Advocate for an improved safety net for women and children: An agenda for TANF reform, New York: Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund.Google Scholar
, 2009b. The bitter fruit of welfare reform: A sharp drop in the percentage of eligible women and children receiving welfare, New York: Women's Legal Defense and education Fund.Google Scholar
, 2009c. Meager and diminishing welfare benefits perpetuate widespread material hardship for poor women and children, New York: Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund.Google Scholar
and , 2011. “Paradoxes and possibilities: Domestic human rights policy in context,” in and (Eds.) Human rights in the United States: Beyond exceptionalism, 1–22, New York/London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
, , , and, 2011. “The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Children can wait no longer for their rights,” Social Work 56(4): 367–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and , 2010. “Losing ground: The persistent declining economic fortunes of children,” Journal of Children and Poverty 16(2): 145–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , 2005. Introduction: “A human rights based approach to the needs of children,” in and (Eds.) Children's human rights: Progress and challenges for children worldwide, 1–7, Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.Google Scholar
, 2011. “Human rights violations as obstacles to escaping poverty: The case of lone mother-headed families,” in and (Eds.) Human rights in the United States: Beyond exceptionalism, 234–254, New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, 2006a. “Welfare racism and human rights,” in and . (Eds.) Economic rights in Canada and the United States, 87–102, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
., 2006b. When welfare disappears: The case for economic human rights, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
., 2001. Welfare racism: Playing the race card against America's poor, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
, , , and , 2010. Household food security in the United States, 2009, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.Google Scholar
, 2010. Child Poverty Act 2010. Retrieved from .
and , 2003a. Poor kids in a rich country: America's children in a comparative perspective, New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
and , 2003b. “Doing poorly: U.S. child poverty in cross-national context,”Children, Youth and Environments 13(2): 48–76.Google Scholar
and , 2006. “Suffer the children?: A call for United States ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Harvard Human Rights Journal 19(Spring): 161–190.Google Scholar
, 2009. The power of justice: Applying international human rights norms to the United States, Washington, DC: Center for American Progress.Google Scholar
, 2006. “Overcoming religious objections to the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Emory International Law Review 20(1): 81–110.Google Scholar
, 2006. “Children's right to an adequate standard of living,” in , , and (Eds.) The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child: An analysis of treaty provisions and implications for U.S. ratification, 237–250, Ardsley, NY:Transnational Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, 2005. “Confronting racial discrimination: A CERD perspective,”Human Rights Law Review 5(2): 239–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
., 2011. “At the cross-roads: Children's rights and the U.S. government,” in and (Eds.) Human rights in the United States: Beyond exceptionalism, 132–152, New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, 2006. “Analyzing the opposition to U.S. ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child,” in , , and (Eds.) The U.S. Convention on the Rights of the Child: An analysis of treaty provisions and implications of U.S. ratification, 19–31, Ardsley, NY: Transnational Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
and , 2010. “Economic human rights violations experienced by women with children in the United States,”Families in Society 91(4): 356–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, 2008. Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination: United States of America, CERD/C/USA/CO/6, UN: Geneva.
, 2011. General Comment No. 13: The right of the child to freedom from all forms of violence, CRC/C/GC/13, UN: Geneva.
, 2009. Concluding observations: Sweden, 51st Session, CRC/C/SWE/CO/4.
, 2007. Day of general discussion on resources for the rights of the child – responsibility of states, UN: Geneva. Retrieved from .
, 2006. General Comment No. 9: The rights of children with disabilities, CRC/C/GC/9, UN: Geneva.Google Scholar
, 2005. General Comment No. 7: Implementing child rights in early childhood, CRC/C/GC/7/Rev.1, UN: Geneva.
, 2004. Concluding observations: Germany, 35th Session, CRC/C/15/Add.226, UN: Geneva.
, 2003a. (General Comment No. 5: General measures of implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (arts. 4, 42 and 44, para. 6), CRC/GC/2003/5, UN: Geneva.
, 2003b. General Comment No. 3: HIV/AIDS and the rights of the child, CRC/GC/2003/3, UN: Geneva.
, 2001. General Comment No. 1: Article 29(1): The aims of education, CRC/GC/2001/1, UN: Geneva.
, 2009. Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development. Report of the independent expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, A/HRC/AA/9, UN: Geneva.
, 2007. Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre:Florence, Italy.Google Scholar
, 2006. The general measures of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: The process in Europe and Central Asia, UNICEF: Florence, Italy.Google Scholar
Urban Institute, n.d. Welfare Rules Database. Retrieved from .
, 2010. Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2009, Washington, DC:U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
, 2010. Hunger and homelessness survey: A status report on hunger and homelessness in American cities, Washington, DC: U.S. Conference of Mayors.Google Scholar
, 2010. Characteristics of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Households: Fiscal Year 2009, Alexandria, VA: USDA Food and Nutrition Service, Office of Research and Analysis.Google Scholar
, 2011. TANF Caseload Data 2009, Administration for Children and Families. Retrieved from -reports/caseload/monthly/caseload2009.htm.
, 2011. Welfare act of 2011, H.R. 1167, 112th Congress. Retrieved from .
, 2009. “Economic, social, and cultural rights in the CRC: Is there a legal obligation to cooperate internationally for development?” International Journal of Children's Rights 17: 23–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, 2011. “Making human rights treaty law actionable in the United States: The case for universal implementing legislation,”Alabama Law Review 63(1): 97--160.Google Scholar
., 2006. “Prospects for ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Emory International Law Review 20(1): 209–216.Google Scholar
., 2001. “Unequal opportunities among unequal states: The importance of examining state characteristics in making social welfare policies regarding children,”Journal of Children and Poverty 7(2): 145–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, , and , 2011. Who are America's poor children?: The official story, New York: Columbia University, National Center for Children in Poverty.Google Scholar
, 2008. Hidden in plain sight: The tragedy of children's rights from Ben Franklin to Lionel Tate, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar