MICHAEL D. A. FREEMAN ^*

This article argues that the conditions experienced by many children make it
important that their rights should be taken seriously. Rights are important if
children are to be treated with equality and as autonomous beings. This means
believing that anyone's autonomy is as significant as anyone else's. This article
examines arguments supporting this position and applies it to the UN
convention.

We have begun to take children's rights more seriously -- at least on one
level.

The international community has framed its much-lauded Conven-
tion on the Rights of the Child ( United Nations, 1989). It has convened
a World Summit on the subject ( UNICEF, 1991). Legislators and
judges, in the Western industrialized world at least, have become con-
scious of the need to recognize the individuality and autonomy of older
children. Institutions, including Ombudsmen, have been established in
a few countries, Norway, New Zealand, Costa Rica and Israel ( Flekkoy,
1991).

England has its Gillick ¹ decision and has recently implemented new
children's legislation, which is not only more child-centered, but the clear-
est recognition yet of the decision-making capacities of children. ² But,
despite Government protestations to the contrary, ³ the law of the United
Kingdom still falls far short of the ideals of the United Nations Con-
vention. ⁴ Although the British Prime Minister of the 1980s could state:
'. . . children come first because children are our most sacred trust', ⁵ she
presided over a steep rise in child poverty and deprivation ( Bradshaw,
1990). The same Government, which proudly vaunts its commitment to
children by pointing to the Children Act 1989, could also boast (though
it would prefer the evidence was discretely veiled) that the number of
children living in families with incomes around the supplementary bene-

-52-