Children‘s Rights: A Commentary on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Protocols, authored by Wouter Vandenhole, Gamze Erdem Tü rkelli and Sara Lembrechts, offers an extensive analysis of the substantive and procedural provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its three Optional Protocols (OPs). The commentary is a timely contribution to the growing field of children‘s rights from a doctrinal legal perspective. It aims to ‘provide a legal interpretation of each article of the CRC as well as its three OPs, focusing on the substantive rights and obligations contained therein‘ (para. I.70). With this perspective, it differs from other commentaries and compendiums taking an interdisciplinary approach to children‘s rights.
This 560-page commentary begins with an introductory chapter on the development of international children‘s rights law in the last 30 years. This chapter elaborates on the historical origins of the CRC, its draft ing process, the regional mechanisms on children‘s rights and critical approaches to the CRC. The introduction is followed by substantive chapters analysing all provisions of the CRC from the Preamble until the final clauses. The overall design of the commentary follows the CRC article-by-article, but the individual chapters are not divided into the sentences or phrases of each provision. While most chapters analyse the relevant clauses based on state obligations, key issues and contemporary debates (see Articles 6, 13, 14, 17, 19, 24, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37 and 39), some chapters unpack the single provisions based on the included rights (see Articles 7 and 27). Certain chapters also include a section titled ‘beyond the law‘ which addresses extra-legal issues (see Articles 5, 9, 20, 21 and 38). Following the analysis of the CRC, the commentary proceeds with three substantive chapters, each devoted to one Optional Protocol (OP). The structure of these chapters generally follows the order of the OPs. The chapters on the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and the Optional Protocol on a Communications Procedure also offer some critical reflections in their conclusions.