Children's Rights and Human Development (Paperback)

Jan C.M. Willems

ISBN 10: 9400000324 / ISBN 13: 9789400000322

Published by Intersentia Publishers, Antwerp, 2010

About this Item

Paperback. Children's rights and Human development is a new and uncharted domain in human rights and psychology research. This multidisciplinary Child Rights Reader is a first attempt to introduce this domain to students and researchers of children's rights, child development, child maltreatment, family and child studies and related fields. For many lawyers, children's rights are limited to their legal dimension: the norms and institutions of international human rights law, often with an exclusive focus on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its monitoring treaty body, the Committee on the Rights of the Child. However, there are three other dimensions to children's rights. Children's rights share a moral and a political dimension with all human rights, which most non-international lawyers all too often overlook. And children's rights have a fourth dimension: the time dimension of child and human development. This time dimension is multidisciplinary in itself. Human development begins - at least - nine months before child birth. When we are four years old, our brain is ninety percent adult size.The infrastructure of our personality, health and resilience is formed in our first years of life - determined by the quality and sheer quantity of parent-child interaction, and based on the successful outcome of our first developmental task in life: secure attachment formation. Yet, more than one third of our children are not securely attached. According to research published in The Lancet in 2009, one in ten children in high income countries is maltreated. Violence against children is a worldwide plague. Socio-economic and socio-emotional deprivation are still transmitted from generation to generation in both rich and poor states. Investing in early childhood, positive parenting and child rights education makes sense - from both a human, a human development, a human rights, a child rights and an economic perspective. This Child Rights Reader brings together substantial and fascinating texts from many fields and disciplines which illustrate and elaborate this point.Arranged in ten chapters titled according to pertinent child rights principles and concepts, these texts offer a state-of-the-art view of the enormous progress made in the past decades and years in several fields of human knowledge. In between these texts several news and factual items inform the reader on the huge gap that still exists between what we know and what we do to make this world a better place for children, and thus to promote human development and better protect human rights. Child rights violations are still met with more rhetoric than leadership. But change is on its way. The texts in this book may be used both as background readings and as tasks for group discussion in problem based learning or other educational settings in child rights law and psychology courses. This book also aims at a broader academic and public audience interested in the many aspects and ramifications of Children's rights and Human development. "Maastricht Centre for Human Rights"--Cover. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9789400000322

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Children's Rights and Human Development (Paperback)
• Publisher: Intersentia Publishers, Antwerp
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9400000324
• ISBN 13: 9789400000322
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

ChildrenÆs rights and Human development is a new and uncharted domain in human rights and psychology research. This multidisciplinary book is the first to introduce this domain to students and researchers of childrenÆs rights, child development, child maltreatment, family and child studies and related fields. The texts in this book may be used both as background readings and as tasks for group discussion in problem based learning or other educational settings in child rights law and psychology courses. The book also aims at a broader academic and public audience interested in the many aspects and ramifications of ChildrenÆs rights and Human development.

About the Author

Jan CM Willems (1952) studied philosophy (Florida, USA; 1971-1972), law (Nijmegen, The Netherlands; 1972-1979), and psychology (Antwerp, Belgium; 1992-1995). He holds a law degree from Radboud University (international law and diplomatic history; 1979), and a PhD degree from Maastricht University (children's rights and child maltreatment; 1998). From 1980-1981, he worked at the Department of Public Law of Tilburg University. In 1981, he started work on the Committee to found a new law faculty at Maastricht University. During the Faculty's first two decades, he was teaching in the field of war and peace (history of international law, Hugo Grotius), and of racial discrimination (xenophobia and human rights). In the late eighties, he shifted his main field of research to the rights of women and the rights of the child in relation to child (sexual) abuse, neglect and exploitation. Presently, in addition to teaching human rights and rights of the child, he is conducting research on the joint responsibility of the state, parents and society in the upbringing of (young) children, with a special focus on the rights of newborn persons. Between 2002 and 2009 he was the first Dutch Chair holder on the International Rights of the Child at VU University Amsterdam. His expertise within the field of children's rights is transgenerational discrimination, or childism (denialism in relation to the failure of states to prevent ill-treatment of children at the hands of their parents or carers), and structural prevention of child maltreatment (integrated SMECC approach).