Research On The International Law Of Protection Of Children's Rights

Children are the future, the hope of the world, the critical thing of national population security and social family welfare and the center of the sustainable development of international society. So strengthening children education and perfecting protection of children's rights to make them grow healthily are becoming one of the overall and strategetic job of every country's government and international society. However, the job of protection children's rights has not been emphasized for a long time as restricted by social or economic development level. In order to understand the current situation on international law of protection of children's rights completely and provide basis and suggestions to the perfection of our country legal system of protection of children's rights further, our overall and deep research on international legal system of protection of children's rights has important theoretic value and realistic meaning undoubtedly.This dissertation is divided into three parts:preface, body and conclusion. The body has six chapters.Chapter One is introduction of the international protection of children's rights. It states some basic questions of international protection of children's rights simply. Firstly, this chapter states and analyzes some conceptions and explores the nature and characteristics of children's rights. It concludes that children's rights are one kind of special human rights, which are special rights that were formed gradually as the culture developed and society progressed. Moreover, this chapter analyzes the history of the development of children's rights and concludes that children's rights are the products of times and the results of development of economy and society instead of being natural rights. With the continuous development of international human rights law, the international law protection of children's rights formed gradually.Chapter Two is research on international law structure and characteristics of protection of children's rights. It mainly explores the basic situation and main characteristic of the international legal documents of the protection of children's rights. This chapter makes a simple analysis to the main contents of the international conventions of protection of children's rights which include the global conventions and some related regional conventions, then it researches the main characteristics of these conventions. This chapter researches contracting situations, main contents detailedly as the convention on rights of the child has very specially important meanings in the field of the international protection of children's rights. That is because not only this convention has the most contracting parties and extremely popular value, but also some rules of it represents the highest standard of the protection of children's rights. Moreover, this chapter analyzes some other global conventions and international documents, then states some regional conventions on the protection of children's rights which are the deepening and supplement of the convention on the rights of the child and have some more comprehensive rules on the protection of children's rights. The main purpose to analyze these conventions on the protection of children's rights is to have comparatively comprehensive knowledge of the international situation of the protection of children's rights which is the realistic basis of this dissertation's research and to make an expectation toward the developing trends of the international protection of children's rights further and to provide related basis for chapter six which states the shortcomings and perfections on the protection of children's rights in our country.Chapter Three is the basic legal principles of international protection of children. It mainly discusses four basic legal principles of the international protection of children, which are the principle of the best interests of children, the principle of equal protection, the principle of respecting children and the principle of multi-responsibilities. The principle of the best interests of children is confirmed by many international legal documents of children's rights and recognized by the convention on the rights of the child. The principle of the best interests of children has become the leading basis of every country's children legislative, judicial and administrative measures and the basic principle of handling children affairs. However, there are not generally agreed opinions on the basic content and the applying aspect of it in international society. The principle of equal protection is also confirmed by the convention on the rights of the child. This principle requires that all children should be protected indiscriminately and should not be treated differently as ethnic groups, races, genders, languages, religions, etc. This dissertation believes that the application of the principle of equal protection should be emphasized properly as the application of it relates the discrimination between ages and the discrimination caused by special status. The principle of respecting children is an important principle of protection children's right too, which is confirmed by international conventions. Although from the essence, this principle is the extension of the principle of the best interests of children, setting this principle as one basic principle of protection children's rights independently is necessary, as on the one hand, the principle of the best interests of children relates widely as being one basic principle of protection of children's rights, respecting children is just an important factor of the application of this principle instead of the whole of it; on the other hand, it needs to be established independently in order to show the importance of respecting of children in the field of protection of children's rights. So making it as one basic principle of protection of children's rights, emphasizing the right of existence and development and respecting children's viewpoints and opinions make the protection of children's rights be better to the children's real interests. The principle of multi-responsibilities is confirmed by international conventions of the protection of children's rights too, which requires nations, societies and families to take corresponding responsibilities in the field of the protection of children's rights. This chapter analyzes the basic contents and the applications of these principles detailedly.Chapter Four is research on children's basic rights under the structure of international law. It mainly states the children's basic rights recognized by international law. These basic rights relate to the children's rights of existence, the children's rights of development and the children's rights in special circumstances. The rights of existence which include the basic right of health and welfare, happiness of life and the right of dignity are the basis of children's existence and development.The rights of development which mainly include the right to education, the right to rest and entertainment, the right of acquiring basic freedom, the right of labor, etc are the rights of children's normal socialization and embodied as the equality of opportunities and distribution justice. The children's rights in special circumstances which include the right of relief of children in special circumstances, the right to social protection of exploited children and the children's right of special protection in juvenile judicial system show the special protection of these children and are the realistic requirement of the principle of equal protection. This chapter illuminates these basic rights and explains their status in international conventions of the protection of children's rights. Chapter Five is research on implementation of international treaties of the protection of children's rights. It mainly analyzes the implementation of international treaties of protection of children's rights in different countries. International treaties'real regulative role in different contracting countries relies on its implementation in different contracting countries. As to the implementation of treaties of the protection of children's rights, this dissertation states from the following three aspects:(1)introduction on international treaties' domestic implementation, (2)domestic implementation of treaties of protection of children's rights, (3) implementation mechanism of treaties of protection of children's rights. These three aspects have intrinsic relations. Introduction on international treaties'domestic implementation generally discusses some basic theoretic problems, main academic viewpoints, practice mode, etc. about how to implement treaties domestically, which is the preparation and basis of the following two questions. Domestic implementation of treaties of protection of children's rights mainly discusses the implementation of concrete obligations, which include procedural obligations and substantial obligations, by contracting parties. The third aspect states and analyzes the implementation mechanism of treaties of protection of children's rights, which relates to the implementing bodies and modes of treaties. It believes that Economic and Social Council plays a comparative important role in the field of the protection of children's rights in UN's main organs. Its role shows in two aspects, one is the power owned by the economic and social council, the other is every kind of committees which realize protecting functions through using their power. Until now, around five modes of encouraging and protecting human rights have forme. These mothods play an important role in protecting human rights and supervising implementation of human rights conventions.Chapter Six is research on the perfection of our countries'legal system of the protection of children's rights. It discusses the defects and perfection of our countries'legal system on the protection of children's rights. Objectively, protection of children's rights in our country has achieved a lot, a series of statutes on the protection of children's rights have been enacted and revised successively and the judicial and the administrative protection have been strengthened. However, it is undeniable that protection of children's rights in our country has many defects and needs to be improved. The defects of legislations on protection of children's rights focus on three points: (1)the related legislations are not systemic, (2)the feasibility of the related legislations is bad, (3) the specialized legislations are missing and the specialized legislations in many fields are inadequate. The defects of judicial protection are the lacking specialized juvenile judicial bodied and specialized juvenile procedure, the very narrow scope of accepting cases of juvenile courts, inadequate professional level of the judges of juvenile courts and inadequacy of system of legal aid of juvenile are the main defects of judicial protection. There are also many problems that need to be improved in administrative protection. Finally this dissertation states the perfecting measures from the following four aspects:(1) the updating of the idea of the protection of children's rights, (2)the perfecting of legislation system of the protection of children's rights, (3)the completing of judicial system of the protection of children's rights, (4) the strengthening of administrative protection of children's rights.