The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada
Studies in Childhood and Family in Canada
Description
Canada signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child over a decade ago, yet there is still a lack of awareness about and provision for children’s rights.
What are Canada’s obligations to children? How has Canada fallen short? Why is it so important to the future of Canadian society that children’s rights be met?
Prompted by the gap between the promise of children’s rights and the reality of their continuing denial, Katherine Covell and R. Brian Howe call for changes to existing laws, policies and practices. Using the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as their framework, the authors examine the continuing problems of child poverty, child care, child protection, youth justice and the suppression of children’s voices. They challenge us to move from seeing children as parental property to seeing children as independent bearers of rights.
In The Challenge of Children’s Rights for Canada, Canada’s obligations and the rights of children are examined from the perspectives of research and development in the fields of developmental psychology, developmental neuroscience, law and family policy.
This timely and accessible book will be of interest to academics, policy-makers and anyone who cares about children and about taking children’s rights seriously.
Awards
- Short-listed, Canadian Policy Research Outstanding Research Contribution Award 2001
- Short-listed, Donald Smiley Prize, Canadian Political Science Association 2001
Reviews
``...the authors provide us with a great deal of important information about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and about the various initiatives undertaken by Canada since ratification of the Convention in 1991....The Challenge of Children's Rights for Canada is a very useful resource.''
- Margaret Hall, Canadian Journal of Law and Society
``Covell and Howe present a comprehensive, well-researched critique of Canada's implementation of the UN Convention. They highlight the consequences of not recognizing, and making allowances for children's rights. They use statistical and anecdotal evidence to directly link many prevalent social problems to the current state of children's rights....This illumination of the problems, accompanied by a strategy for change, makes this book both timely and necessary.''
- Dan Kolenick, Saskatchewan Law Review
``In The Challenges of Children's Rights for Canada, Katherine Covell and R. Brian Howe provide a moving and well-reasoned argument for the basic human rights of children. They offer compelling reasons for social reform with a view toward advancing and protecting the rights of children globally, and specifically in Canada.''
- Joan Whitman Hoff, American Review of Canadian Studies, Spring 2008
``...the book is thorough and sobering....Covell and Howe...imply a seismic philosophical shift in the way we regard our social and economic responsibilities to others, as parents and citizens.''
- Susan Turner, Philosophy in Review