Should Children Have The Same Rights As Adults Essay

Human rights apply in general and to all age groups so children have the same general human rights as adults. Throughout the years, world leaders decided that children should have specific rights that recognise their special needs which lead to the signing of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989 affording children with a specific convention because of the belief that people under 18 years of age often need special care and protection which adults do not. This made sure that the world recognised the fact that children have human rights as well, after advocates were seeing children as victims of discrimination treated as objects of concern which remain voiceless and invisible while disputes are fought over them.

It is essential to primarily examine opposing arguments in regard of questioning whether children should have rights in general. Many have sought to question the sensibility of the rights approach and it has been argued that children cannot be given the same rights as adults because they cannot be trusted like adults and due to the fact that they might lack in capacity when compared to adults. Additionally, it has been argued that the idea that parents need to be able to parent their children goes against the notion of perceiving children as equal

They argue that children are just not qualified to have rights because they lack the capacity to do so. Beauchamp and Childress (2001) distinguish seven levels of incompetence (Buchanan and Brock, 1989) which include: inability to evidence a preference or a choice; inability to understand one's situation or relevantly similar situations; inability to understand disclosed information; inability to give a reason; inability to give a rational reason; inability to give reasons where risk and benefit have been weighed;and inability to reach a reasonable decision, as judged, for example, by a reasonable person