In 1924 the League of Nations adopted the Declaration of Geneva[1], a historic text that was the first to recognise and affirm the existence of specific rights for children and, most importantly, the responsibilities that adults have towards them.

In the early 1920s, shortly after the horror of the First World War, in which more than twenty million people died and just as many were wounded, more than a million orphans were suffering from famine and disease. In its 1924 Declaration, the League of Nations declared that humankind “must give children the best it has to offer” by protecting them from war, combating child poverty and tackling all forms of violence against children.

This Declaration was influenced by the work of Janusz Korczak[2], who directly witnessed consequences of war, the Tsarist conflicts and the trauma of the First World War. He was convinced that education in non-violence – in the context of violence not only by adults towards children but also between children themselves – is a fundamental issue for our democracies and for civilisation.

Following the Declaration of Geneva, a second Declaration on the Rights of the Child was adopted in 1959 by the United Nations General Assembly, which declared that “the child […] shall be given opportunities and facilities […] to enable him to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity”[3].

Thirty years later, on 20 November 1989, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a more comprehensive text, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This text had been submitted to the United Nations ten years earlier on the initiative of Poland, Janusz Korczak’s home country, on the grounds that neither of the two previous declarations was binding or covered all the rights of the child. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is universal in scope and binding on States that have ratified it, contains 54 articles, including one on the principle of the best interests of the child, which echoes what Janusz Korczak called “the child’s right to respect”[4]. Article 3, paragraph 1 of the Convention states:

In all decisions concerning children, whether taken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child must be a primary consideration[5].

The concept of the best interests of the child is defined as the pursuit of the child’s best interests[6] and aims to ensure the effective enjoyment of all of a child’s rights and respect for a child’s overall development, whether physical, mental, spiritual, moral, psychological or social, in the light of the child’s particular vulnerability. The best interests of the child are therefore at once an objective, a guideline, a guiding concept, a procedural principle, a rule of interpretation and a subjective right that must inform, inhabit and irrigate all standards, procedures and decisions concerning each child[7].

In addition to recognising the best interests of the child, the Convention on the Rights of the Child declares that from birth, the child is a holder of all human rights in a universal, indivisible, inseparable and interdependent vision, and that being a small human being does not mean having a small set of rights.

This year [2024], we are celebrating the centenary of the Geneva Declaration. It has to be said that while historic progress has been made in theory, especially as embodied in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the fight for the effective protection of children in armed conflicts, to combat all forms of violence and to eradicate child poverty, remains a challenge for civilisation worldwide.

Children and teenagers are growing up in a world of multiple crises and upheavals: global warming, terrorism, wars all over the world (and now in Europe), and the threat of poverty and downward social mobility. In this age of social networks and non-stop news, our particularly anxiety-provoking world is having repercussions on young people’s mental health; now more than ever, we need prevention and protection policies that are equal to the challenge.

For children’s rights to become a political issue, they have to be made public. This is what our society has started to do in recent years, and we have never before heard so much in the French media about violence against children, the consequences for their development, and the need to protect them. As adults, we have a huge responsibility to ensure that child victims no longer have to wait until they are former children to be listened to and heard[8].

Welcoming the views of children and adolescents means offering them a listening ear and a caring, reliable, reassuring and secure presence for as long as is necessary. We need to provide good-quality support that respects the time children need to confide in us and, sometimes, to denounce acts that have far-reaching consequences for their future. Children need an adult who will take the time to listen to them, who will understand them, who will think about them and empathise with them, and who will talk to them and see possible ways forward or solutions.

We need to give children the courage to speak out rather than waiting for them to act out –towards themselves or others – before we finally feel obliged to listen to them. This is a pedagogical process that should continually influence the actions of adults and all childcare professionals. To achieve this, children must be considered as subjects of rights and subjects of consideration, rather than simply objects of care.

In France, in this anxiety-ridden world, there is increasing talk of an absence of authority. Supporters of traditional education are questioning the July 2019 law dubbed the “anti-spanking law”. This law amended the Civil Code by stating that “parental authority is exercised without physical or psychological violence”. At the time, some members of the public were reluctant to support the law due to concerns that it would lead to a diminution of authority, and some members of parliament opposed it with the argument that the State had no right to interfere in children’s education.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child remains an eminently modern text that recognises the child as an alter ego, an equal, another self – but other than oneself; different, without being reducible to that difference[9]. Why should the fact that an adult is 50 centimetres taller and 50 kilos heavier give them the right to use force to coerce? If a celebrity in the media were to appear to advocate violence against elderly or disabled people, at the very least an apology would be demanded. Similarly, we would rightly take offence at violence committed against animals. But our society still accepts that we can go on TV and say that we can hit our children to educate them. This ignorance is hindering the human progress that is the foundation of our humanity and our solidarity.

This return to authority, based on fear and violence rather than on legitimacy and the transmission of knowledge through benevolent attitudes, is totally at odds with the international commitments of States. The work of great educationalists such as Janusz Korczak, along with the contributions of neuroscience, call for a revolution in education and teaching: we know that a child brought up with kindness and empathy, and helped to connect with and express their emotions, will become empathetic and sociable, and will not develop aggressive or antisocial behaviour.

This is proof that Janus Korczak’s thinking is still very much alive today and that his thoughts on the place of children in our society continue to be a source of debate. While much remains to be done to protect children, wherever they are born, from the effects of war, poverty, abuse in families and in institutions, and all the other forms of suffering, no one today can deny that children are subjects of rights.

Footnotes

[1] League of Nations, Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1924), http://www.un-documents.net/gdrc1924.htm.

[2] For more details on Korczak’s life, see: Dominique Prusak and Anna Szmuc, “Jonas Korczak: la parole est aux enfants,” podcast, Radio France, 5 August 2017, https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/l-heure-du-documentaire/janusz-korczak-la-parole-est-aux-enfants-5550216 and Louise Tourret, host, Avoir raison avec…, podcast, episode 4, “Janusz Korczak, l’invention du droit des enfants,” Radio France, 8 August 2024,  https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/avoir-raison-avec/janusz-korzcak-l-invention-du-droit-des-enfants-8142445.

[3] G.A. Res. 1386 (XIV), Declaration on the Rights of the Child (20 November 1959), https://archive.crin.org/en/library/legal-database/un-declaration-rights-child-1959.html.

[4] Janusz Korczak, Le droit de l’enfant au respect (Faber, 2009).

[5] G.A. Res. 44/25, Convention on the Rights of the Child (20 November 1989), art. 3 ¶ 1.

[6] In French, the meilleur [‘best’] interests of the child rather than the supérieur [‘superior’] interests of the child would have been a better translation of the English expression ‘the best interests of the child’.

[7] Cf. UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment 14 on the Right of a Child to Have Their Best Interests Taken as a Primary Consideration, UN doc. CRC/C/GC/14, art. 3 ¶ 1.

[8] On the child’s right have their views respected, cf. UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment 12 on The Right of the Child to be Heard, UN doc. CRC/C/GC/12.

[9] In the same way, cf. Anne-Catherine Rasson, La vulnérabilité de l’enfant et la justice constitutionnelle: de l’intérêt de l’enfant aux droits de l’enfant (Larcier, forthcoming).