Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Dai Ute Child Rights 2008
Dai Ute Child Rights 2008
701--723
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), U.N. General Assembly (1989)
is a major breakthrough in defining children as fully human and working to ensure
them the attendant benefits worldwide. While childrens rights as equal human be-
ings may seem obvious in the 21st century, the politics of establishing and ensuring
such rights are contentious. The CRC is a brilliant negotiation of conceptions of
the child and international relations, yet certain tensions in the childrens rights
process lead to a lack of clarity in a global situation that continues to leave millions
of children at risk. Analyzing the CRC and related practices from a developmental
perspective can help identify obstacles to the advancement of childrens rights,
especially those related to opportunities for rights-based thinking and the exercise
of self-determination and societal-determination rights.
In this article, I offer a qualitative analysis of childrens rights in the context
of what I refer to as the CRC activity-meaning system. I present a theoretical
framework for considering this system of policy and practice as enacted in the
CRC treaty and related monitoring, reporting, qualifying, and implementing doc-
uments. A discourse analysis of conceptions of the child and those responsible
for ensuring their rights in seven representative documents (including the CRC
Treaty, a report by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, minutes of a
U.N. Security Council meeting, reports by a State-Party, and a report by a civil so-
ciety group in that country) reveals tensions inherent in the CRC activity-meaning
system.1 Emerging from this analysis is a tension between childrens rights and
nations rights. Created in part via explicit and implicit assumptions about child
development in the CRC as these posit responsibilities across actors in the broader
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Colette Daiute, The Graduate Cen-
ter, City University of New York, 365 5th Ave., New York, NY 10016 [e-mail: [email protected]].
1
Documents for this analysis were selected to represent the major actors in the CRC system and
to provide a case study following a sequence of required and alternative reports related to activities by
one State-Party (Colombia) over a period of several years.
701
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C 2008 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues
702 Daiute
CRC system, this tension challenges the implementation of childrens rights and
the development of childrens rights-based understandings. I use this analysis to
explain why future research and practice should address the development of chil-
drens rights-based understanding not only in terms of maturation or socialization
but also as integral to salient conflicts in their every day lives.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, U.N. General Assembly,
1989) is an international treaty adopted by the 159 Members of the United Nations
General Assembly in 1989 and subsequently ratified by all but two U.N. member
nations (the U.S.2 and Somalia). The CRC consists of a Preamble and 54 Articles
stating the rights of the child and the responsibilities of States Parties in
ensuring those rights. The Convention outlines social, economic, cultural, civil,
and political rights assured via binding processes of implementing and monitoring
by ratifying states. The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child
(the CRC Committee) is central in orchestrating this process designed to provide
an international mechanism for monitoring progress on implementation of the
Convention working with other Treaty Bodies, United Nations agencies, and
other organizations to promote the Convention and the realization of the rights
of the Child. This CRC system is, moreover, the first human rights treaty that
involves nongovernmental organizations with an official role in reporting on its
implementation (www.crin.org). The CRC also advocates that children have a say
in matters that affect them, but, as I will show, their perspectives enter into the
dialogue mostly via alternative reports and research.
Most scholarly discussion about the CRC focuses on the treaty document
itself, but it is in this broader CRC system of activities that we can identify is-
sues related to ensuring or limiting childrens rights. A potential contribution of
developmental psychology is to analyze the conception of the child, how this con-
ception fits with the politics of international relations required for ensuring rights,
and any tensions resulting from such interdisciplinary endeavors. Identifying these
tensions is important for understanding challenges to implementing the CRC and
for designing research on childrens rights-based understanding and participation.
Toward these ends, this article presents an analysis of the broader CRC system,
including the treaty and documents enacting related monitoring, reporting, and
qualifying activities.
After a brief description of the CRC, I discuss the analytic design in terms
of a sociocultural activity theory of human development, present the discourse
2
There has been little written about the reasons for the United States failure to ratify the
CRC. In personal communication, Roger Hart, who has been involved in the CRC development and
implementation reports legal and political reasons. The United States has claimed that individual states
must approve all treaty signatures, which not all states have done. In addition, Hart reports political
pressures, in particular, from powerful southern states that did not want to ratify the CRC because of
the apparently expansive nature of childrens rights to make decisions about issues like birth control
independently of their parents.
The Rights of Children, the Rights of Nations 703
analysis methodology derived from this theory, and review results of the analysis.
Based on these results, I explain how notions of child development implicit in the
CRC document leave childrens rights vulnerable to the politics of treaty-making.
Results of the analysis also suggest the need to make sociopolitical aspects of
child development more explicit, especially in relation to childrens rights-based
understandings and opportunities for childrens self-determination.
Questions guiding the inquiry include: What is the nature of childrens rights
discourse across the CRC activity-meaning system? What tensions emerge from an
analysis of the broader CRC activity-meaning system? How could these tensions
affect opportunities for childrens development of rights-based understandings and
practices of self-determination rights? What developmental theory might allow
for critical and creative analyses of childrens rights-based understandings and
actions? Based on the analysis, I will explain that focusing on developmental
theory and the politics of treaty-making suggests the need for a developmental
approach that considers children as social beings who interact with the material and
symbolic circumstances in their environments, including the political processes
like rights, which are essential to their lives.
The CRC
with rights worth international and local protection was first mentioned in Dec-
laration of the Rights of the Child in 1924 (Hart, S.N., 1982, 1991; Hart, R.A.,
1999). On the other hand, there is also evidence of the limits of the treaty and
its implementation. Scholars have offered numerous critiques of the CRC, stat-
ing that philosophical, legal, political, constitutional, methodological, and cross
cultural aspects of the CRC may serve to facilitate or constrain its effective-
ness (Murphy-Berman & Weisz, 1996, p. 1231). Critics have noted, in particular,
the predominantly Western perspective (Wilcox & Naimark, 1991) and the latent
imperialism embedded in the moral and utopian assumptions guiding such hu-
man rights treaties (Dahbour, 2003; Koshy, 1999). Activists have, however, used
the strong wording of the CRC to advocate for childrens rights and to pressure
governments to create programs for childrens participation (Hart, 1999).
Intrigued with the relationship between nurturance and self-determination
rights, developmental psychologists have examined childrens and adults under-
standings of different categories of rights and responsibilities of ensuring those
rights (Ruck, Abramovitch, & Keating, 1998). Although the CRC and related ac-
tivities rely on certain definitions of the child, relatively little discussion of child
development theory explicitly guides the CRC or interactions between any theo-
retical assumptions and the politics of implementing the CRC. A treaty based on
conceptions like evolving capacities of the child could, for example, usefully
identify those capacities and the nature of their development, especially because
such definitions differ across developmental theories. While leaving open the spe-
cific nature of evolving capacities may allow for diverse interpretations across
cultures (Landsdown, 2005), it also potentially allows cultural and political pow-
ers to override childrens rights. When focusing in this way on the figure of the
child and the nature of development, we ask, for example, what kinds of capac-
ities within and across contexts constitutes maturity to participate in war at age
15, while still requiring that the child adhere to religious and political practices
defined by the family and the State.
If the treaty endows rights based on evolving capacities but does not de-
fine these capacities nor the circumstances and course of their development, the
nature of the protections remains open to question. While one theory posits that
children are not capable of critical reflection before the age of 12 (Piaget, 1968),
for example another theory posits that critical reflection depends on the nature of
challenges children face in their lives (Burton, Obeidallah, & Allison, 1996). Chil-
dren growing up in the context of war or inequality would, on this view, be able to
reason critically about precisely those issues (Daiute, 2006). Although the purpose
of the CRC is not to define developmental theory, the basis of developmental con-
cepts could affect its interpretation and implementation. We should, thus, address
questions about the theory of child development embedded in the CRC system,
the representation of children as psychosocial actors, and interactions of those
representations with the politics of international treaty-making. Ultimately, being
able to support childrens rights-based understandings and action depends on such
clarity.
A complete review of theories of child development is not possible in this
article, but previous reviews have highlighted several diverse emphases (Damon
& Lerner, 2006). Most developmentalists today recognize the integrated bioso-
ciobehavioral nature of child development in that the maturation of the childs
body and brain relates to experiencing and understanding the social and physical
world. Nevertheless, major theories differ in whether they emphasize biological or
social processes (Damon & Lerner, 2006). Versions of the two most popular the-
ories guiding contemporary research are cognitive developmental theories, which
have made great contributions by explaining the increasingly complex cognitive
organization of the childs mind (Piaget, 1968) and social theories, which have of-
fered explanations of how mind is shaped through symbolic interaction in cultural
systems (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998; Vygotsky, 1978).
Because there is no explicit discussion of the foundational principles of child
development in or attached to the CRC, I drew on sociocultural theory (Leontev,
1978; Vygotsky, 1978) focusing on the development of higher order processes, like
those required for rights-based understanding and self-determination, as they occur
in the symbolic activity of discourse (Harre & van Langenhove, 1999; Wertsch,
1991). I generated questions, a design, and analysis of child development theory
within the CRC and related activities from the perspective that development is an
interaction of individual and society.
Following the proposal that Every function in the childs cultural develop-
ment appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first
between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychologi-
cal) (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57), the social political context with which children
interact from birth not only affects them but defines them. For this reason, devel-
opmental analysis of childrens rightswhether and how children are treated as
members of sociopolitical lifemust consider how children interact in society, not
706 Daiute
only in terms of abstract cognitive processes but also in terms of what is going on
in their environments. For example, children being recruited to fight on behalf of
their country or to cope with inferior educational systems may perceive that public
institutions are limiting their rights to life, learning, and play, but it is in precisely
such situations where their reflection and any potentially critical results of such
reflection are undermined by the States need for child soldiers or its inability to
provide education.
The sociocultural perspective posits that social institutions shape individuals
and that individuals can transform social institutions (Engestrom & Miettinen,
1999). Consistent with this theory, children must have opportunities for critical
and creative engagement in salient activities, which include exposure to important
relations in society as well as to interpersonal interactions in the peer domain. On
this view, development occurs within actual social processes including conflicts,
and developmental trajectories are defined in terms of social struggles, which may
be debilitating or transcendent. As we see later on, this could mean involving chil-
dren in such activities as discussions of war, social exclusion, or education budgets
rather than protecting them from such discussions. Ideally, civic activities are pos-
itive, like those involving youth as apprentices in social organizations devoted to
improving society, but, in societies at war or with great economic inequalities, civic
activities can be extremely negative. In such contexts, understanding childrens
rights as a developmental process becomes especially important.
3
This definition of culture as socially mediated activity differs from definitions of culture as a
set of beliefs and rituals belonging to a specific national, ethnic, gender, class, or other group.
708 Daiute
The CRC activity-meaning system is enacted in the CRC treaty and related
documents, as listed in Table 1. As shown in Table 1, this collection includes the
CRC (Preamble and 54 Articles), Declarations and Reservations (Kuper, 1997;
U.N. Treaty Collection, 2001), the U.N. General Assembly Security Council Item
no. 63 on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Child, 61st Session,
the CRC Committee Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under
Article 44 of the Convention, Concluding Observation: Colombia, 42nd Session,
a State Party Report: Third Periodic Report of Colombia, and the Alternative
Report to the Report of the Government of Colombia on the Situation of the
Rights of the Child. I selected these documents because they represent the major
actors involved in stating, ensuring, and monitoring childrens rights and follow
a sequence of reporting and monitoring for Colombia, a State Party figuring
prominently in the process.
The CRC, like other international treaty practices, involves a system of in-
teractions, like reporting and monitoring by key participants. As shown in the
column labeled Activity-Meaning on Table 1, these documents constitute a sys-
tem of activities including policy making, qualifying, monitoring, and reporting.
This theory-based design provides a way of considering the broader CRC process
relevant to childrens sociopolitical understandings.
Reading the CRC document, we ask Who is the child? Who are the childs
agents? What do these representations imply about the childs reasoning and devel-
opment as a social political agent? How do these explicit and implied definitions
of the child occur in relation to the representations of political actors mentioned in
the CRC? The discourse analysis to address these questions involved identifying
all references to the child, those individuals, roles, and institutions defined as
acting on behalf of the child, the nature of relationships among these actors, stated
and implied developmental processes, and qualifications of these relationships
and processes for different categories of rights. After compiling these identifica-
tions, I compared them to those stated in the major contemporary explanations of
development: maturational, socialization, and sociocultural.
The general model of human development embedded in the CRCalthough
not explicitly discussedis one of a gradually maturing organismexpressed in
terms like evolving capacities of the child and will be given weight in accor-
dance with age and maturity. Characteristic of the CRC discourse is its reference
to the child, implying that child is a universal category. The related discourse of
maturation suggests that this universality is biological. At the same time, theres
a process of socialization implied, via expressions about the prominent role of
Table 1. Documents in the CRC Activity-Meaning System for Discourse Analysis
Actor/Document Activity-Meaning
International
1) United Nations CRC Policy-making treaty
2) Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) Qualifying activity
Declarations and reservations to the CRC (State-Parties take issue with CRC)
3) U.N. General Assembly, Security Council Agenda Item no. 63 Monitoring activity
On Promotion & Protection of the Rights of the Child (for State-Party violations & concerns)
61st Session, 26 October 2006
4) Committee on the Rights of the Child, consideration of Monitoring Activity
The Rights of Children, the Rights of Nations
States Parties and families to make decisions on the childs behalf, qualifica-
tions like taking into account the rights and duties of the childs parents, and
exceptions such as accommodations to State Parties recruiting children into armed
conflict at age 15 when necessary, although childhood is otherwise protected up
to age 18.
one of socialization to local values and practices that the child would presumably
internalize by age 18.
The CRC represents two primary agents on the childs behalf: the family
environment and State Parties. The childs relationships are, thus, hierarchical
in terms of membership in a family that protects and socializes the child and
membership in the State that protects and socializes the family. Analyses reveal a
range of family responsibilities and rights, including the familys role in providing
a home for the child and the familys role in social reproduction (such as in their
responsibility to provide the child with a name and language). As stated in the
Preamble, parties to the Convention declare they are Convinced that the family
as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth
and well-being of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the
necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities
within the community. As the primary agent for the child, the family is defined
in Article 5: parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family
or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons
legally responsible for the child.
The family provides continuity for social reproduction, by providing iden-
tity in a name, heritage language, and harmonious development of his or her
personality. The designation of the family environment may seem obvious as
the childs primary domain of nurturance, especially to those of us in Western
industrial and postindustrial societies, but the family is also a mediator for divisive
issues, like culture, religion, and politics. The nesting of the childs rights within
the institution of the family is, for example, a way that the CRC allows for the
protection of traditional values, practices, and ideologies. What this designation
misses, however, is the childs participation in societyas a means of develop-
ment and as a potentially transformative force of social change should children, for
example, disagree with family practices or participate in new activities auguring
trajectories that differ from tradition. Children in countries of the former Soviet
bloc participate in activities to promote democratic citizenship, for example which
their families might find to be quite foreign or untenable.
The CRC States Parties are the primary agents mediating for the childs rights,
sometimes through the family, as discussed in the previous section, but mostly
through their direct involvement in the CRC and in domestic laws. Ratifying States
promise to recognize the rights of the child, promote, take all appropriate
measures to secure and protect the childs rights, to treat [the child] without
discrimination, to ensure the childs best interests, to develop, establish,
and preserve the childs identity (such as to provide a birth certificate). Ratifying
States promise a range of protections (such as to take appropriate legislative and
712 Daiute
Across the wide range of rights in the Convention, national values and laws
are sovereign and qualifying each right in some way. Most of the articles, in short,
allow States Parties to limit a childs right in conformity with the law and in the
interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public
health or morals or protection of the rights and freedoms of others (p. 15). The
childs right to his or her family, expressed as the right not to be separated from
the family, limits the primary buffer between the child and the State: Where such
separation results from any action initiated by a State Party, such as the detention,
imprisonment, exile, deportation or death (including death arising from any cause
while the person is in the custody of the State) of one or both parents or the
child.
The CRC establishes childrens rights as universal but posits limits in terms
of their developmental capacities to act on their own behalf. Noticeably missing
in the Convention is representation of the child as a social being or social agent.
None of the articles highlights equal relationshipssuch as with peers, siblings, or
other social institutions where the child might have responsibilities or an effect on
others. The absence of any mention of social relational reasoning and interaction
skills underscores the underrepresentation of capacities and, more importantly,
underrepresentation of childrens social political participation. What then is the
meaning of self-determination? How does it differ from societal-determination?
How do these capacities develop? More critical questions could ask about whether
and how children apply perceptual and analytic skills (such as perspective-taking)
to local material and symbolic circumstances, such as those related to debates
about gender equity and religious practices.
In summary, extremes of both maturation and socialization theories are im-
plicit in the CRC. As noted in Articles 12 and 14 above, childrens rights, such as
those to freedom of expression and conscience are defined in terms of evolving
capacities and in accordance with age and maturity, thereby expressing a matu-
rational view of development. These same rights are also limited by the rights and
duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to provide direction
to the child and to determine the best interests of the child. These parental
The Rights of Children, the Rights of Nations 713
In this section, I discuss how an analysis of dialogic relations across the CRC
activity-meaning system offers insights about the dilemmatic nature of defining
childrens rights. The analysis of the broader CRC system illustrates how State
Parties qualify their compliance with the treaty, thereby limiting childrens role in
expressing and developing their rights-based understandings.
Qualifying Rights
Childrens rights are qualified not only within the CRC document, as men-
tioned above, but also in the broader CRC system. As indicated in Table 1, the
childrens rights system allows for qualifying activity, as demonstrated in the for-
mal process of Declarations and Reservations. A few examples of Declarations
and Reservations illustrate CRC respect for cultural and religious Conventions,
such as Djiboutis declaration that it shall not consider itself bound by any pro-
visions or articles that are incompatible with its religion and traditional values
(U.N. Treaty Collection, 2001, p. 8) and the Holy Sees reservation that Family
planning and education services in Article 24.2, [will] mean only those methods of
family planning which it considers morally acceptable that is the natural methods
of family planning (U.N. Treaty Collection, 2001; p. 11). In more political vein,
Cuba asserts that under the domestic legislation in force, majority is not attained
at 18 years of age for purposes of the full exercise of civic rights (p. 7). Because
declarations and reservations clarify or claim exemptions to specific CRC articles,
they are involved in an ongoing negotiation of the Treaty.
An analysis of the nature of declarations and reservations offered insights
about how State Parties tailor the CRC to their circumstances and goals. This
analysis involved identifying the frequency of CRC Articles cited in qualifications
by State Parties in Declarations and Reservations to the Convention on the Rights
of the Child.
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Table 2. CRC Article Mentions in Declarations and Reservations to the Convention on the Rights of
the Child
Note. There were no mentions for Articles 27, 33 36, 42 50, 52 54.
For the remainder of Articles, there were 6 1 mentions.
The next section further foregrounds the tensions between childrens rights
and nations rights inherent in the CRC activity-meaning system. While qualifying
activity privileges the State Party perspective, monitoring and reporting open
the field of debate to the international and local areas. Monitoring occurs by
the international organizations of the United Nations Security Council and the
U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child. State Parties and nongovernmental
organizations are involved in reporting to those international organizations, which
716 Daiute
conflicts and injustices they face, offers insights about the context-dependent na-
ture of childrens reasoning about sociopolitical issues relevant to rights-based
discourse. Several examples follow to illustrate how eliciting childrens perspec-
tives about contentious sociopolitical issues belie assumptions about maturation
and socialization. These examples suggest the need for increasingly systematic
research to assess whether childrens experiences with rights violations lead to
understandings that occur earlier than maturational theories would posit and how
those experiences might lead to understandings that differ from those of their
elders.
related to what I did as a medic in the NPAI was good at what I did, I even used
to operate on those who were shot . . . Mama asked me why I wanted to stay
with the NPA. I told her that I wanted to experience life as an NPA . . . Back
then, I wasnt afraid of dying . . . At least I had a chance to tell my Mama the
reasons why I was going. It was the first time I told her about how I felt,
(Sta. Maria, 2006, p. 35). Examining such thinking to identify how young people
like Sandra define nurturance and self-determination rights in relation to specific
challenges and opportunities in their environments seems a productive step toward
establishing context-sensitive methods and definitions of childrens rights-based
reasoning.
Another study asked young people to reflect on their experiences and needs at
the end of the 1990s war in the Balkans. In that context, where the state and adult
generation had been silencing talk of war to protect children from the horrors
they had experienced, children spoke clearly about their rights to learn about
their history, including the recent wars. Based on interviews with children and
their parents in two areas of the Balkans, researchers report that both Serb and
Croatian children said they wanted to know more about the war and explained why
this knowledge is important (Freedman & Abazovic, 2006). The tension between
parents view of protection and the childrens need for participation shouts out
in these typically conflicting quotes: We should learn about the causes of the
war and how disputes should be resolved in order to avoid wars. . . . I believe we
should talk about it, while the following is typical of the parents interviewed:
We have been trying not to burden them [the children]. We dont talk about
politics at home so we are trying to protect them as much as we can. Children
are, moreover, aware of the suppression, as one boy said, They avoid the subject
at home (Freedman & Abazovic, 2006, p. 23). The issue in this situation is the
right to knowledge, which becomes salient in the Balkans because of the ongoing
tensions that children observe daily in spite of the silence denying those tensions.
Childrens thirst for a particular kind of knowledge thus emerges in a specific
contentious context.
In the United States, there is also evidence that young people exposed to con-
flict in urban contexts reason in critical ways. In one study, for example, although
the curriculum and teachers in a violence prevention program emphasized resolv-
ing conflicts by employing a range of interpersonal communication strategies,
7- through 10-year-old children identifying with African-American, Latino, and
immigrant backgrounds noticed that discriminatory practices can make conflict
resolution difficult if not impossible. These 7- to 9-year-old children, like the chil-
dren in the Balkans, spontaneously focused on tensions reflecting broader issues
in the society, perhaps those discussed in the privacy of their homes or among
trusted peers. The following quote, for example, is the beginning of a longer con-
versation by two children who were recent immigrants to the U.S.: What a bad
country America is . . . It has a lot of pollution. I mean look at the manners they
have . . . the bad language . . . and you cant even get used to them (Daiute, Stern,
720 Daiute
system and located in monitoring and reporting documents typically at the margins
of the system.
Given the sociocultural hypothesis that it is specific situations where critical
thinking emerges, such ongoing research would also require methods that allow
children to express their rights-based understandings in a range of ways over con-
texts and time. For this reason, future research could beneficially elicit narratives
from children living in situations where their self-determination rights, in partic-
ular, might be in conflict with those of the state and other institutions. As we saw
in the analysis above, moreover, issues of conflict and intergroup relations tend to
be those that State Parties qualified and exempted from their agreement to comply
with the CRC. These qualified issues are, thus, contentious, and, I would argue,
those issues that are broadly discussed in the society or exposed by uncomfortable
silences. From the perspective that childrens development is interdependent with
the activities in their society, we could expect that conflicts and silences would be
highly salient to children in such contexts.
Implications
In summary, this analysis of the representations of the major actors in the CRC
activity-meaning system reveals conceptual issues and power relations that limit
childrens rights. Although the relatively reduced vision of the child addresses
the political problem of acquiring ratifications in the short run, the emphasis on
nurturance rights at the expense of participation rights limits the potential value of
the CRC. By analyzing child development as a social cultural political process,
rather than as a maturational or socialization processes, we may be better able to
identify challenges and define human development in relation to circumstances
where children are growing up, including the complex situations that challenge
their rights. Consistent with the analysis presented here, I suggest that the issues
that the State Party wants to control further in terms of childrens rights are
contentious ones in the society, such as girls education or birth control. Based
on previous research on interactions among children and youth (Daiute et al.,
2003; Giroux, 2001), I posit that it is precisely such contentious issues that are
being discussed privately if not publicly among young people. By broadening the
unit of analysis to the CRC activity-meaning system, we see how the discourse
of childrens rights can address contentious issues within state parties and from
the perspective of young people. These issues of salience in everyday discourse
would, thus, be ones provoking childrens critical reflection and perhaps the basis
for expression about matters that affect them, those matters promised and limited
in the broader CRC system. I point out these tensions to suggest a theoretical basis
and direction for future research, interventions, and ongoing policy-related inquiry.
In particular, identifying these tensions suggests the need for research focusing on
how children understand the issues that are contentious in a society, such as taboos
722 Daiute
against discussions or activities, like those related to war, and the transformation
of cultural practices related to social, political, or economic change.
Koshy, a human rights scholar, makes another point we can apply to devel-
opmental theory: while the very meaning of utopia seems to impel us toward an
exhaustive possibility, an absolute manifestation, or an end-point, . . .We are only
always getting there and the horizon keeps moving as we proceed (1999, p. 27).
The many threats to claims for childrens rights in the CRC suggest we are far from
utopia. If our research could account for detours that occur when children struggle
with a range of less-than-ideal circumstances, we may be able to create models
that provide new insights about young peoples thinking and agency within these
situations of social ills that ensnare them.
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