Routledge International Handbook of Children’s Rights Studies

Since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) children’s rights have assumed a central position in a wide variety of disciplines and policies.

This handbook offers an engaging overview of the contemporary research landscape for those people in the theory and practice of children’s rights. The volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to children’s rights, as well as key thematic issues in children’s rights at the intersection of global and local concerns. The main approaches and topics within the volume are:

• Law, social work, and the sociology of childhood and anthropology

• Geography, childhood studies, gender studies and citizenship studies

• Participation, education and health

• Juvenile justice and alternative care

• Violence against children and female genital mutilation

• Child labour, working children and child poverty

• Migration, indigenous children and resource exploitation

The specially commissioned chapters have been written by renowned scholars and researchers and come together to provide a critical and invaluable guide to the challenges and dilemmas currently facing children’s rights.

Wouter Vandenhole holds the UNICEF Chair in Children’s Rights – a joint venture of the University of Antwerp and UNICEF Belgium – at the Faculty of Law of the University of Antwerp (Belgium). He is the spokesperson of the Law and Development Research Group and chairs the European Research Networking Programme GLOTHRO. He has published widely on economic, social and cultural rights, children’s rights and transnational human rights obligations and is a founding member of the Flemish Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre and co-convener of the international interdisciplinary course on children’s rights.

Ellen Desmet is a post-doctoral fellow at the Law and Development Research Group of the University of Antwerp and the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University (Belgium). Before, she was a research and policy staff member at the Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre, and taught anthropology of law at the University of Leuven.

Didier Reynaert is a lecturer in social work at the Faculty of Education Health and Social work of the University College Ghent, he is involved in several research projects in the field of child and youth policy and children’s rights. He is member of the board of the Flemish Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre. Previously, he worked for the Flemish Children’s Rights Coalition, the Child Legal Centre and as a civil servant at the Ministry of the Flemish Community on youth protection.

Sara Lembrechts is fulltime staff member at the Children’s Rights Knowledge Centre (KeKi), where she is responsible for the collection and dissemination of children’s rights research, as well as for policy advice to the Flemish government.