On 23 February 2023, it was exactly 100 years since the General Council of the Save the Children International Union  met in Geneva to adopt the first international Declaration on the Rights of the Child[2]. Eglantyne Jebb, an Englishwoman recognised by the Save the Children Fund as the organisation’s founder, played an important role in drafting the declaration and proposed its title: the Declaration of Geneva.

In this chapter I will look at the roles of Eglantyne Jebb, the Save the Children Fund and the Save the Children International Union, and attempt to put the Declaration of Geneva[3] into context. I will also look at the ‘upgrade’ that the declaration received in 1924, when it was adopted by the League of Nations. Lastly, I will try to answer the questions of whether the declaration still has some relevance today, how children’s rights have evolved since the declaration was adopted, and whether we have made progress since then.

The need for historical thinking

Eric Alterman[4] points out in the New Yorker magazine that there is a gap between “some people who have the resources to try to understand our society” and the rest, who do not. As Alterman’s article continues, it becomes clear that knowledge of history is a good tool for understanding society: “it (…) helps us understand how we got here and why things are what they are”. Alterman expresses concern about the falling number of history students at many American universities. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, journalist Bas Heijne pleads that we should not do away with teaching the subject of history to high-school students[5]. Indeed, I find it concerning that today’s students of pedagogy and (developmental) psychology learn little about Jean Jacques Rousseau, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Ellen Key, John Dewey and Janusz Korczak or their approaches, theories, concepts and ideas. A Dutch university professor, Willem Koops, writes that “in the social sciences in general, but in particular in psychology and even pedagogy, historical awareness is disappearing. It is normal that young social scientists now are of the opinion that texts published longer than five years ago are out of date and therefore they doubt their importance. As a consequence, the wheel has to be invented every day and that is a great danger to (social) sciences today”[6].

Therefore, I will also try to show that in evaluating the Declaration of Geneva, it is important to look at the history of the children’s rights movement.

The changing image of childhood

Another thing to be aware of is that there are different approaches to historical thinking. In my book The Rights of the Child and the Changing Image of Childhood[7], I built on the work of Philippe Ariès. Until his book on the history of childhood was published in 1960, concepts like ‘child’, ‘youth’ and ‘adolescence’ were considered invariable and timeless; in the Middle Ages, for example, the concept of a ‘child’ did not exist[8]. Ariès’ book initiated a real polemic, sometimes referred to as ‘the Ariès discussion’. This boils down to the question: is the image we have about the specific nature of children consistent across time, or is Ariès right to conclude that the image of childhood has changed radically since the Middle Ages? My book concludes that the image of childhood did change in the twentieth century, as illustrated by our shifting ideas on children’s rights: from perceiving the child as an object of rights, in need of protection, to perceiving the child as a subject of rights, whose opinion is voiced and asked for.

In a critique of Ariès’ approach, John Tobin[9], a professor in human rights law, states that “the modern conception of childhood to which Ariès and those who follow him draw attention is of course a recognizably Western conception. It applies to the developed societies of the global North”. However, Tobin also admits that the importance of Ariès’ work “may lie not in the claim that the concept of childhood is a modern invention, but instead in the claim that there is a particular modern conception of childhood”[10].

In drafting the Declaration of Geneva one hundred years ago, Eglantyne Jebb and the Save the Children International Union succeeded in putting children and their rights on the map for the first time[11]. I will now discuss why adopting this declaration was so important, what the goals might have been, and what kinds of rights were proclaimed.

Eglantyne Jebb: trying to make the world a better place

Born in Victorian England in 1876, Eglantyne Jebb[12] was the fourth of seven children in a rather wealthy family who lived in Shropshire, in the West Midlands. Eglantyne’s father owned an estate and had his children educated by governesses. One of these, who came from the Alsace, taught Eglantyne French and German. Eglantyne’s family was not conservative, because they believed in the education of women; in 1985, Eglantyne went to study at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford, and a year later she went to a teacher training college in Stockwell, south London. After her father passed away in 1894, Eglantyne moved in with her mother, who was then living in Cambridge. One biography of Eglantyne written in the 1960s’ depicts her as being a rebel[13]. Perhaps what the biographer, Francesca Wilson, means by this is that Eglantyne chose not to marry (contrary to what was expected of young ladies at the time) but instead wanted to help make the world a better place. I noticed a resemblance in the biography of another pioneer of children’s rights, Janusz Korczak (the penname for Dr Henryk Goldszmit). Korczak recalled being in a London park (during a visit from his native Poland) when he decided that instead of having children he would choose “the idea of serving the child and his rights”[14]. Children’s rights gave both Jebb[15] and Korczak[16] a purpose in life. They both regularly experienced feelings of depression. In terms of their feelings about children, however, they differed. Korczak enjoyed living among them in a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw from 1912 to 1942 (when the Germans deported him and the children to the Treblinka concentration camp), but Eglantyne Jebb had “a lukewarm interest in rights and (…) lacked particular affection for children”[17], which, according to her biographer Clare Mulley, “seems to make Eglantyne an unlikely champion of children’s rights”[18].

The archive materials give me the impression that Eglantyne’s family (especially her mother and one of her sisters, Dorothy Buxton) always supported her activities, and that Dorothy was a strong influence. Most of the members of Eglantyne’s family were known for their strong commitment to public service and their strong social conscience. Eglantyne’s mother used her own organisation to promote arts and crafts among women who were poor; and in 1919, during the First World War, Eglantyne’s sister Louisa (“Lill”) Wilkins was active in assisting the Board of Agriculture to set up the Women’s Land Army, an organisation which, during the First World War, mobilised women in the fields to replace the men who had been drafted. I do not believe, therefore, that Eglantyne’s family saw her as a ‘rebel’. But even if she was rebellious, from 1919 she was certainly not a ‘rebel without a cause’. That cause became the rights and welfare of children.

In 1913 the Macedonian Relief Fund asked Eglantyne Jebb to go on a fact-finding mission for them in the Balkans, where she “witnessed firsthand the plight of refugees” who were living in extremely crowded conditions, “where family members had to take turns to sleep and children would shiver in the cold waiting for portions of soup to be distributed”[19]. Her sister Dorothy was a feminist: she was a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an internationalist movement to which many women belonged who had previously fought for women’s right to vote[20]. She became a socialist and a pacifist, too. Compared with her sister Eglantyne, Dorothy was more extravert and outspoken. Eglantyne was frail and not always in good health; she was more of a ‘soft power’, appealing “with those blue eyes” to people’s conscience.

The League of Nations begins, the food blockade continues

On 16 September 1918, when the Austrians asked for peace negotiations and the Bulgarians requested a ceasefire, the Allies realised that they were on the verge of winning the First World War. They did not, however, lift the food blockade they had imposed on the Central Empires.

This practice stems from the old military strategy of placing a town under siege so that its citizens run out of food and surrender. Yet even after 3 October 1918, when the German Emperor Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands and the new German government asked for an armistice, the food blockade continued.

Herbert Hoover (then the coordinator for food assistance in Europe), who later became president of the United States, wrote in his memoirs that “the continuation of the food blockade during the four months after the armistice was a sin against statesmanship and the whole of humanity”[21].

Hoover writes: “… I insisted that the war would not be won by the blockade on food for women and children, but by the blockade of military supplies and by military action.” According to Hoover, “child mortality in Germany rose by 30% after the war, while one third of the children were ill owing to undernourishment”[22]. The Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) declared that starting an aggressive war is a crime and therefore States have a duty to try to prevent it. An important decision made at the Paris Peace Conference was that of accepting the proposal to create the League of Nations. However, it still took a whole year for this predecessor of the United Nations to hold its first meeting.

The recognised founder of the Save the Children Fund: Eglantyne Jebb

Eglantyne Jebb was collecting and sharing critical information and – like her more politically active and extraverted sister – she joined the Fight the Famine Council. In order to achieve the end of the naval blockade and let food supplies back in to former enemies, the council used tactics like awareness-raising, letter-writing, generating publicity and lobbying politicians – the same tactics used by human rights non-governmental organisations[23] all the time today. In a boost for the Fight the Famine Council, it was joined by Lord Parmoor (Charles Alfred Cripps) along with members of parliament from the Labour Party and trade unionists.

Notwithstanding the council’s lobbying, the British government did not change its position.

New tactics

To attract more attention, the council, in a meeting on 15 April 1919, decided to set up – as a new tactic – the Save the Children Fund. This served a wider political cause (certainly for Eglantyne’s sister Dorothy), but even relief work feeding “(former) enemy children” was still controversial for many. The activists attracted attention when Eglantyne Jebb distributed handbills in London’s famous Trafalgar Square with text reading: “Our blockade has caused this! All over Europe millions of children are starving to death. We are responsible. Write to Lloyd George and say you will not stand it. Raise the blockade everywhere.”

Because Eglantyne Jebb had not shown the text to the censor before it was printed, she was fined five pounds for unpatriotic behaviour. She intended not to pay it, because refusing to pay would attract even more publicity. And this publicity helped by ensuring that the Save the Children Fund’s first public meeting, held at London’s Royal Albert Hall, was well attended. Eglantyne Jebb entered the Royal Albert Hall arm in arm with the writer Bernard Shaw. Asked why he was supporting this unpatriotic event, Shaw answered, “I have no enemies under seven”[24].

The ‘forgotten founder’ of the Save the Children Fund: Dorothy Buxton

A hundred years after the birth of Eglantyne Jebb, a ceremony was held at the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. The chair of the Save the Children Fund, Lord Gore-Booth, evoked the memory of two outstanding Englishwomen “who did so much to alleviate human suffering, Florence Nightingale and Eglantyne Jebb”[25]. It appeared that Eglantyne Jebb was being given a saintlike status[26]. Emily Baughan[27] and Juliano Fiori[28] deserve much credit for shining the spotlight on Eglantyne Jebb’s sister, Dorothy Buxton. In what has been written on Eglantyne Jebb by Francesca Wilson[29], Mulley[30], Waltraut Kerber-Ganse[31] and Gillian Wilson[32], in my own book (in the chapter[33] on Eglantyne Jebb and in the part entitled Declarations and Conventions: Past and Present), the influence of Dorothy Buxton has indeed been underexposed. The impression one gets from reading Baughan is that there was no sibling rivalry between Eglantyne and Dorothy; rather, the young organisation took a deliberate change of course: from being a committed political pressure group (which helped children as a tactic for achieving its true aims, which were fairer conditions of peace, closer connections between nations, and free trade) towards being a neutral humanitarian organisation whose aim was solely to help children.

Baughan believes that it was Dorothy Buxton[34] who pushed her sister forward to distribute the leaflets on Trafalgar Square, knowing full well that this would lead to not only Eglantyne’s arrest but also plenty of publicity for the good cause. Eglantyne was relatively “uncontaminated” (Dorothy was known to be a socialist and a feminist, more a part of the ‘hard core’ than the quieter Eglantyne). Baughan’s impression (from reading many archive materials) is that Eglantyne’s sister made a strategic choice to show that donating to the cause of children was a non-political act and that there was nothing unpatriotic about it. Stepping out of the limelight and pushing Eglantyne forward to lead the Save the Children Fund symbolised, according to Baughan, a switch in policy and “a conscious attempt to depoliticise the public image of Save the Children”[35].

A new, non-political image

The need for such a non-political image of the Save the Children Fund became clear in 1921, when the Save the Children Fund sent food to Soviet Russia in response to the famine there. The suspicious Soviets were reluctant to accept relief from the newly formed Save the Children Fund. But the fact that Charles Roden Buxton[36], Dorothy’s husband, had been part of a British Labour Party delegation to Russia[37] convinced the Soviets that the Save the Children Fund could be trusted. In its search for the right public relations strategy, the Save the Children Fund found in those years the ‘magic formula’ for fundraising and discovered “the visual power of images of child hunger victims”[38]. These photographs underlined the innocence of children. Similarly, for its logo, the Save the Children Fund chose an infant in swaddling clothes, modelled after one of the famous ceramic glaze tiles by the sculptor Andrea de la Robbia (1435–1525) on the façade of the Orphanage for Foundlings, the Ospedale degli Innocenti, in Florence (now the UNICEF Innocenti Global Office of Research and Foresight).

The Save the Children International Union

Save the Children entered the arena as an international non-governmental organisation on 6 January 1920. It was launched in the Grand Salon of the Palais de l’Athénée (where the International Committee of the Red Cross was also founded). The Save the Children Fund (of Eglantyne and Dorothy) and the Comité International de Secours aux Enfants (in Bern) jointly founded the Save the Children International Union. This was done “under the patronage of the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross]”[39]. Because one of the principles of the Committee is strict neutrality, it would never have agreed to patronise this international organisation if that neutrality had not also been one of the working principles of the Save the Children International Union. The Union intended to “abstain from all direct action, but centralise and distribute funds for relief of distress among children everywhere”[40]. In the history of the International Committee of the Red Cross, this patronage is unique.

Internationalism

Eglantyne Jebb not only started this new international non-governmental organisation with the purpose of coordinating relief activities all over the world, but she also added child protection to its remit. And there was more: Eglantyne Jebb thought that children would “foster reconciliation between nations and promote a new kind of internationalism – what she called “supernationalism”[41]. This romantic world view expresses the hope that children would be the instrument for peace. Eglantyne also felt very much at ease about communicating with the types of people we would now call VIPs. Her efforts to build relationships with such influential people as the Swiss Liberal politician Gustave Ador and Baron C. F. de Geer would pay off later on. Ador was a minister of the Swiss National Council from 1889 to 1917 (and was president of the Council in 1901)[42], and he chaired the International Committee of the Red Cross from 1910 to 1928. Eglantyne Jebb asked most of these important people to become members of the Save the Children International Union’s General Council, which met at least once a year. Gustave Ador was probably the most influential of these people, and he strongly advocated for Geneva to play a central role. He was the driving force who had successfully lobbied for the newly formed League of Nations (founded in 1919) to be moved from London to Geneva, which happened in 1920. There was also competition, with the Belgians lobbying hard to make Brussels the heart of international child protection activities[43]. An excellent article by Dominique Marshall[44] illustrates that there was no consensus among politicians on the new status of childhood; rather, it “was contested at every point”. On top of that, attempts to create a Child Welfare Committee of the League of Nations faced opposition and internal competition after the League of Nations was established in 1919[45].

In the meantime, Eglantyne Jebb and Dorothy Buxton had managed to inspire a group of prominent Swedish pacifists and feminists to set up a Save the Children in Sweden (Rädda Barnen). Lindkvist, who examined the history of the Save the Children Fund’s Swedish counterpart, writes: “These women were not sentimental nor, in the usual sense of the word, charitable ladies. They worked to help destitute children […] but they did not talk exclusively of charity. From the beginning, they spoke of rights, of solidarity, of social duties, of help to self-help”[46].

1923: a year of crisis

The Dutch journalist and historian Frans Verhagen[47], who wrote a book about the year 1923, describes that year as “the turning point year […] five years after the ‘Great War’ developments in many countries took a new turn. We can speak of a turning point which had enormous consequences in the long term.” In the context of Germany, the German writer Volker Ullrich describes 1923 as being the year before “the fall into the abyss”[48].

On 11 January 1923, French and Belgian troops marched into Germany to occupy the Ruhr region. This was in response to Germany not making the reparation payments which, after the First World War, it was obliged to do under the Treaty of Versailles[49]. Given that the Save the Children International Union was (according to Bolzman[50]) the outcome of its founders’ desire for “the pacification and unification of nations”, the organisation’s General Assembly convened in the midst of this crisis, on 23 February 1923.

The idea of a declaration

The idea of a declaration of children’s rights was not unique to Eglantyne Jebb and the Save the Children International Union. In my book The Rights of the Child and the Changing Image of Childhood[51] I describe most of the earlier declarations that might have inspired Jebb. For example, Dorothy Buxton and her husband (who had been in Russia) might have known about the Declaration of the Rights of the Child that was presented four months after the October Revolution at the first conference of the Organisations for Cultural Enlightenment, which was held in Moscow from 23 to 28 February 1918. The original draft came from the Association for Free Education for the Prolet’cult Congress. Sadly, the Communist Party soon became very suspicious about such initiatives.

Another declaration was adopted by the joint conference of Young Workers’ International and the International Union of Socialist Youth, which was held in Salzburg on 21 August 1922. This declaration was called the Programme of Immediate Demands, but it was often referred to as the Declaration of the Rights of the Adolescent. The two organisations drafted “a minimum programme for the protection of youth”. Eglantyne Jebb knew about this declaration: George Werner[52], who had been president of the Save the Children International Union from 1921 to 1923 and its vice-president from 1923 to 1929, helped her (together with Etienne Clouzot) to put the Declaration of Geneva “in its final form”.

The International Council of Women was an umbrella organisation for women’s movements. Eglantyne Jebb was regularly in touch with its powerful Scottish member, Ishbel Hamilton-Gordon, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair, who was the Council’s president – a post she held between 1893 and 1936. At the International Council of Women’s conference in Norway in 1920, the women’s councils of Italy and the United States submitted resolutions requesting the Council draft a children’s charter. A committee was appointed to write a draft, and in 1922 they met in The Hague. The results were presented to the executive of the International Council and the national councils. The charter was not a short document: it consisted of seven sections, each divided into a substantial number of paragraphs. The first principle opens with the powerful sentence: “This Charter is based on the principle that every child is born with the inalienable right to have the opportunity of full physical, mental and spiritual development”[53].

Eglantyne Jebb thought that this children’s charter was too detailed and felt that it “resembled a list of standard minimum rules, rather than a declaration of fundamental principles”[54]. However, in my view, the opening sentence of the International Council of Women’s children’s charter is written more in the language of rights than is the Declaration of Geneva, on which we will shine the spotlight now.

The myth and the reality

Since their early days, the Save the Children Fund and the Save the Children International Union had been accomplished at public relations and myth-building. As one myth has it, Eglantyne liked to go to Mount Salève, a 900-metre high mountain near Geneva but on French soil, from where there is a magnificent view of the lake, the Jura mountains and, when the weather is clear, even the Mont Blanc. She had told friends in England that she wanted the Union to issue a short declaration that would be easy to translate and easy to understand[55]. When Eglantyne arrived in Geneva in 1922, she whisked Etienne Clouzot (the secretary-general) away from his office and into a quiet restaurant at the top of Mount Salève, where she disclosed her plans. Clouzot was convinced, and they immediately began work on a draft. I am sure that there are many inspiring places they could have gone to at Lac Léman in Geneva, but if indeed it is true that Eglantyne Jebb had to hold a meeting on Mount Salève to draft the Declaration of Geneva then this reveals a narcissistic personality trait: the similarities bring to mind the biblical story of Moses, who departed to the mountain and stayed there for 40 days and nights in order to receive the Ten Commandments.

The myth remains a beautiful story. Yet in reality, an earlier draft of the Declaration of Geneva appeared in the Save the Children International Union bulletin on 30 October 1922. Mulley writes that Eglantyne Jebb had proposed that the Union adopt “a document defining the duties of adults towards children, which each country should recognise either by means of State intervention or by private action”[56]. Furthermore, Moody[57], quoting from the Union’s archives, states that in autumn 1922 a consultation process had taken place to arrange input into the text of a children’s charter. Justifying the need for a conclusion, Jebb wrote: “If we wish […] to go on working for children […] the only way to do it seems to be to evoke a cooperative effort of the nations to safeguard their own children on constructive rather than charitable lines. I believe that we should claim certain rights for children and labour for their universal recognition”[58].

The consultation process led to several drafts of “some sort of Declaration on the Rights of the Child”[59]. A dominant version that circulated was a declaration that contained seven points. Receiving feedback on this was not easy for Jebb, and she sometimes found it very frustrating. Ishbel Hamilton-Gordon, the Marchioness of Aberdeen (who was also a member of the Union’s Council), proposed that the International Council of Women’s children’s charter should replace the Union’s charter[60]. According to Mulley, Lady Aberdeen disapproved of the shorter Union charter. All this consulting gave Jebb the feeling that she was having to make too many compromises. According to Mulley, by January 1923, when she presented A Children’s Charter, A Declaration of the Rights of Childhood, Jebb felt that the original set of principles had been watered down too much and preferred Lady Aberdeen’s children’s charter[61]. When it was proposed that Jebb take the draft of the declaration to the Save the Children International Union’s meeting for approval, she took her chances and revised the document with her confidant Étienne Clouzot (who, as mentioned earlier, was secretary-general of the Union from 1921 to 1929) and Georges Werner[62], and had it translated into French[63]. According to Mulley[64], after many consultations, the declaration was “finally approved” by the Fourth General Council of the Union on 17 May 1923. The French copy of the Declaration of Geneva was adopted and approved by the Union in February 1923. Therefore, it is correct to state that the Declaration of Geneva was first adopted by the Union’s General Council and that the League of Nations adopted this text too in 1924[65]. A Belgian poster mentions both dates: on 23 February 1923 it was adopted by the Save the Children International Union’s General Council, and on 17 May 1923 it was adopted by the Union’s Executive Committee.

The Save the Children International Union organised an event on 28 February 1924 at which prominent figures in the Union signed the French version of the document.

Eglantyne Jebb proposed the title ‘Declaration of Geneva’ (certainly pleasing Gustave Ador and others who were lobbying for the recognition of the ‘spirit of Geneva’ and promoting Geneva as the ‘city of international organisations’). There was probably also another reason for naming it the Declaration of Geneva: it gave the declaration a neutral title, and I am not referring to the Swiss neutrality here. There were members of the Save the Children Fund who had opposed the title Charter of the Rights of the Child on the basis of there being too much talk of rights. The word declaration was also less strong – and therefore more acceptable – than the word charter.

However, when the Declaration was adopted in the League of Nations, the President of the Assembly, Giuseppe Motta, stated: “The Assembly’s approval of the Declaration, makes it, so to speak, the Children’s Charter of the League”[66]. And with so many members of the Union’s General Council having connections with the International Committee of the Red Cross, it should be pointed out that they liked the association that people might have with the (Red Cross) Geneva Conventions. Moody[67] explains that Jebb had played with the idea that the Declaration of Geneva could be added to the Geneva Conventions, but the idea was abandoned as being unrealistic.

Making the Declaration of Geneva known

Under Article 42 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989, “States Parties undertake to make the principles and provisions of the Convention widely known, by appropriate and active means, to adults and children alike.”

Although the Declaration of Geneva did not contain such a principle, the Save the Children International Union, great at public relations, immediately began a publicity campaign. I have already mentioned that on 28 February 1924, signatures were added to the declaration. This was done as part of an impressive ceremony in Geneva’s Museum of Arts and History. In the presence of many diplomats and representatives from international organisations, a copy of the Declaration of Geneva was signed by members of the Save the Children International Union. It was an appealing story, and many newspapers around the world reported on the declaration.

One of the most heartwarming public relations stories is that of Gustave Ador (the first person to sign the declaration in the Museum of Arts and History) reading[68] the declaration for a radio programme broadcast from the Eiffel Tower on 21 November 1923. I attempted to get more information about this broadcast from Maison Radio France, but I was not successful[69]. Just as I was beginning to think that it was ‘fake news’, however, the International Committee of the Red Cross sent me a photograph of the broadcast with Baron de Geer in the studio with Gustave Ador.

The biggest boost: adoption by the League of Nations

Dominique Marshall[70] states that “there was considerable ambivalence about the Declaration and its authors within the League of Nations”. And there had been competing developments: in 1919 the International Labour Organization had adopted a convention fixing the minimum age for admitting children into industrial employment and a convention on night work performed by young people employed in industry. Marshall also reports that the members of the League of Nations’ Social Secretariat were aware that the International Council of Women had adopted a children’s charter in 1920. The Save the Children International Union “hoped”, according to Marshall, “to take the main role in drafting of a definite project which could be adopted by all countries”[71]. “What made [Jebb’s declaration] more popular in the face of this competition seems to have been her emphasis on a simple document. […] Submitting the Declaration to the League of Nations was a continuation of one of the SCIU’s [Save the Children International Union’s] strategy to give the charter ‘validity’”[72].

At the time, Dorothy Buxton’s husband, Charles, was a representative of Great Britain at the League of Nations. Also helpful was the fact that Ramsay MacDonald (the British prime minister of a minority Labour government from 1924) was in power and present in Geneva. Now it paid off that Eglantyne Jebb had such excellent contacts with Gustave Ador and Giuseppe Motta (the Swiss politician who was president of the fifth assembly of the League of Nations in 1924). It was the former Swiss president Giuseppe Motta who brought the proposal (with the support of Ramsay MacDonald) to adopt the declaration to the Fifth Committee of the League of Nations (dealing with child welfare). Eglantyne and her associates played the lobby game well: by approaching Jorges Valdes Mendeville, the Chilean representative at the League of Nations, they ensured that the proposal came from a neutral person and obtained a unanimous vote in favour. “The Assembly endorses the declaration of the rights of the child, commonly known as the Declaration of Geneva and invites the State Members of the League to be guided by its principles in the work of child welfare”[73].

However, I do not mean to give the impression that everybody in Geneva was equally enthusiastic about the efforts to get the Declaration of Geneva adopted. Eglantyne Jebb was a good lobbyist, having circulated the translations of the draft declaration in 37 languages, and she had a lot of ‘vitamin R’ (relationships). Marshall[74] writes that the “immediate circumstances” of the quick and universal endorsement of the Declaration of Geneva “were helped by the domination Britain exerted on the various agencies of the League”. Marshall is of the opinion that efforts to come to the “the adoption of a Declaration of Children’s Rights in September 1924 were heavily influenced by British and elitist considerations”[75]. Marshall writes: “In 1922, members of the Social Section of the Secretariat tended to dismiss the SCIU [Save the Children International Union] as inefficient and useless. Once the emergency work of famine became less pressing, they thought that the organisation had become unfocused”[76]. Marshall shows us that even the ‘neutral’ efforts by Eglantyne Jebb were seen as connected with British political interests, although this is now forgotten by some. The adoption by the League of Nations gave the Declaration of Geneva its significance – not the signing ceremony on 23 February 1923 or the proclamation broadcast from the Eiffel tower.

The content of the declaration

The preamble of the declaration states that “men and women of all nations recognise that mankind owed to the Child the best it has to give.” “The best it has to give” being understood as its readiness to provide for “those needs of children that should be met at all costs, even in times of economic pressure”[77]. As Geraldine van Bueren also observed, the Declaration of Geneva “was never intended to create an instrument which placed binding obligations upon States. The duty to provide the child with ‘the best it has to give’ was […] on men and women i.e., adults, to ensure the welfare of children”[78]. Nowadays, we give the State a more important role; for example, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is mainly ratified by States Parties. At the time when the Declaration of Geneva was written, as Geraldine Van Bueren observes, children were regarded as “recipients of treatment rather than holders of specific rights”[79]. Chanlett and Morier[80] add that “in its broadest sense, the Declaration embodies basic principles of child welfare, leaving appropriate action to each country, within its needs and resources.”

Bruno Cabanes[81] sees the drafting of the Declaration of Geneva in a more critical light: “The 1924 Declaration clearly belongs to the post-war context, in which children were at the heart of all the various efforts for peace and rebuilding, precisely because their fate went beyond national borders. The issue of children’s rights was in essence transnational. The child as a universal figure, a fiction to which all of the signatories to the 1924 Declaration subscribed, was conceived of as an apolitical being who could unify peace efforts. Children were portrayed as the ultimate beneficiary of post-war reconciliation.” Or, in stronger language from Cabanes: “The cult of the universal child, a fiction drawn up by international law, was spread, [along] with [that] that of neutrality and innocence – values that World War I had violated with extraordinary brutality, but which the Save the Children Fund’s founders still wanted to honour”[82]. The archaeological digging by Cabanes and Marshall reveals that even though the international children’s human rights movement began with the Declaration of Geneva, it was connected with various interests (for instance, Britain still being an important colonial power). The children’s rights movement is not especially self-critical[83], and more archaeological work is recommended.

Principle I of the declaration states that “each child must be given the means for his or her normal development, both materially and spiritually”. The ‘child study movement’ stimulated research into the child and child development as legitimate work[84]. In a draft of the declaration that was circulated in 1922 but was not adopted, the text still read: “Tout enfant doit être mis en mesure de se developer normalement au physique comme au moral”, which would have raised further ethical questions about what is ‘normal’.

I discussed the content of the Declaration of Geneva with a Dutch children’s rights activist[85] to see if she still experienced the five principles from 1923 as relevant. She found it moving that the first principle deals with child development. She immediately made the link with concerns today in the Netherlands about the mental health of young people and the rising number who are experiencing suicidal thoughts.

Interestingly, although nowadays we worry about young people’s mental health, we no longer prioritise the spiritual development of the child[86]. This is hidden away in paragraph 1 of Article 27 (on the standard of living) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child[87].

Principle II also deals with the duty of the community towards the individual child: “The child that is hungry must be fed; the child that is sick must be nursed; the child that is backward must be helped; the delinquent child must be reclaimed; and the orphan and waif[88] must be sheltered and succoured.”

Jebb later (1927) pointed out that in the past, priority had been given to those who were the most useful to the community, and here another moral standard was set out[89]. The opening clauses of Principle II are concerned with material resources and health. The “child that is backward” probably refers to children with intellectual disabilities. Edward Fuller[90] explained that the implementation of this part of the principle was often prevented by lack of funding, since in 1924 so much depended on charity.

The principle that children who got into trouble with the law should be not only punished but also treated and rehabilitated was new at the time. Juvenile courts were a new phenomenon (the first of these was opened in 1898 in Chicago).

Principle III states that “The child must be the first to receive relief in times of distress”. Bruno Cabanes[91] finds Principle III to be the most important “insofar as it, like the Preamble, legitimizes the existence of specific rights for children by virtue of their position in society. […] The experience of the Great War and the symbol of the child as a martyr that grew out of it, left their mark on the Declaration of the rights of the Child.” Fuller explains that this principle is not only important in times of war, but “must always have priority”[92]. People knew after the First World War what “times of distress” were. However, the question which could immediately be raised here is that of who pays for relief in times of distress. The declaration does not provide an answer here, although the preamble directs itself to “men and women of all nations” and not to States. However, by attaining recognition of the principles of the declaration by the League of Nations, the Save the Children International Union managed “to get under the skin of States and to establish some sort of complicity”[93].

Our children today are also living in a “time of distress” – at the time of writing, it is a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, a civil war in Sudan, and the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, followed by the war with HAMAS in Gaza and now famine in Gaza[94]. Sometimes, children are the first to be targeted (as was the case in Ukraine), and there may be questions about whether relief is reaching them at all. Often, the ministries of foreign affairs and development cooperation of States that provide aid or pay into a humanitarian relief fund do not even have a policy on children’s issues and are not child-focused. Therefore, principle III is still relevant.

Nevertheless, although the Declaration of Geneva gives the impression that it deals with the whole realm of children’s rights, this principle shows that the orientation was actually towards children in times of war and its aftermath. This is understandable, given that the declaration was drafted just a few years after the horrors of the First World War. Today we value children’s participation rights, but when the declaration was drafted children were expected to obey; their participation in decision-making[95] would have been confined to strange dreams. In the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, we now have Article 12 on respect for the views of the child – something that would have been unthinkable in 1923. The child has now also become a subject of rights, not just an object of rights to be protected. From the beginning, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has rejected “the charity mentality and paternalistic approaches”[96]. Cabanes writes: “By explicitly placing children under adult protection, the text of the Declaration outlines the shape of ideal society where the weakest may live in safety, free from want. Children were perceived as fragile and innocent beings to be protected, particularly ‘in times of distress’. Children were not seen as legal subjects or as future citizens.” The focus was on welfare rights and the obligations of adults “to nourish, care for, protect and educate them [children], especially when they are starving, sick or in danger’’[97].

In a Dutch newspaper I read a very moving story about a midwife in Amsterdam who, in response to the earthquake in Turkey, started to collect items (such as nappies) for babies there. The headline read “Who thinks of the smallest?”[98] This is definitely in the spirit of this principle. There are, however, challenges. “Children should”, says the former chief executive of Save the Children UK, Mike Aaronson[99], “be the first to get help, however, we cannot single out children for special help without addressing broader social, economic, cultural and political factors”.

The declaration contained no non-discrimination principle such as we now find in Article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet in a draft from 1922 (the one that still had seven principles rather than five) there was such a principle: “The child shall receive help, without any consideration of race, nationality and (religious) belief”[100]. Perhaps we should read the beginning of Principle III, which starts with “the child”, as “any child, without discrimination”[101]. This is probably what Jebb wanted, given that she desired that the declaration would be universal[102]. The whole philosophy behind setting up the Save the Children Fund was rooted in the basic idea that we should also help others, such as the Austrian babies for whom Eglantyne Jebb demonstrated on Trafalgar Square.

Principle IV states that “The Child must be in a position to earn a livelihood and must be protected against every form of exploitation.” The focus on earning a livelihood that we see nowadays is different, with the emphasis more on ensuring that the child can really be a child (Article 31 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child formulated the right to leisure, play and culture). In the phrase “to earn a livelihood”, we can trace close connotations with child labour, which we are more careful about today. In one draft of the Declaration of Geneva that was circulated among Union members, one of the seven principles read: “Work by children shall be protected everywhere, especially against all forms of exploitation” (“Le travail de l’enfant sera protégé partout contre toute exploitation”)[103]. I am pleased that this draft principle did not make it into the final Declaration of Geneva, as it would have hampered efforts to arrive at better rules on the minimum age for employment. Nevertheless, it took us until 1973 to get International Labour Organization convention No. 138 on an absolute minimum age for employment[104].

In Principle IV, the child is considered to be an independent individual whose purpose in life is not to serve others. The second part of the principle is concerned with child slavery, child prostitution and trafficking.

However, we must also view this principle against the backdrop of Britain as a colonial power encouraging young labourers in the colonies to learn trades like carpentry. The Save the Children Fund funded many such projects. The Save the Children International Union organised an International Conference on African Children in June 1931. Interestingly there were only five Africans at the conference. I have observed that it is only in recent years that the decolonisation of children rights[105] has become an issue. Investigations have begun into the atrocities committed in residential schools for indigenous children in Australia and Canada. The child rights activist in the Netherlands who was my sparring partner in analysing the principles pointed out that those drafting the Declaration of Geneva were passing many of society’s problems on to children[106].

 

Principle V states that “the child must be brought up in the consciousness that its talents must be devoted to the service of its fellow-men.”

Bruno Cabanes[107] is of the opinion that Principle V “does not express a right, in the strict sense of the word, so much as an ideal, characteristic of the early days of the League of Nations”.

Writing in 1951, Fuller observed that Principle V, like the preamble of the declaration, “stands out by its universal quality” (my emphasis)[108]. In the present day, this principle clashes with nationalistic ideas about education. As I wrote in 1992, “The need to have enemies is the foe of the universality of children’s rights”[109]. This principle resembles paragraph 1(b) of Article 29 (Aims of Education) of our present Convention on the Rights of the Child, which reads: “States Parties agree that education shall be directed to the development of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and for the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations”. And in paragraph 1(a) of Article 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, we find the word talents from Principle V of the Declaration of Geneva: “States Parties agree that education of the child shall be directed to the development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential.”

Have we made progress since the Declaration of Geneva?

With the publication of the Declaration of Geneva 100 years ago, the general concept of children’s rights became a subject of debate in an intergovernmental organisation for the first time[110]. Owing to this, children’s rights have been on the map since 1924. However, the conceptualisation of children’s rights has changed a great deal since then, in particular since 1948 as a result of discussions in various human rights departments of the United Nations. The image of childhood in 1924 was one of the child needing protection and being the object of rights. Nowadays, the child is, according to the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, also a subject of rights, whose opinion must be heard.

Children were not consulted when their rights were formulated in 1923 (this was also the case when the Convention on the Rights of the Child was debated in the United Nations between 1978 and 1989). It was not until July 2024 that the intergovernmental working group set up to draft an Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child[111] was asked “to ensure the meaningful participation of children […] and in particular to give children the opportunity to express their views on the topic of the proposed Optional Protocol […]”[112]. Finally, children’s and adolescents’ participation has started to be taken seriously when drafting human rights standards about them.

Though participation rights are important, we have not yet succeeded in implementing even Principle II of the Declaration of Geneva (“The child that is hungry must be fed; the child that is sick must be nursed”). As Alex de Waal writes:

In countries from Afghanistan to Yemen, Ethiopia to Haiti, and especially in Sudan, armed actors are disregarding humanitarian laws and principles. Either deliberately or recklessly, they are starving children and mothers with catastrophic consequences. Famine has long been a product of war, and over the last few years diplomats and lawyers have sought to strengthen the international legal regime against it, including an amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court that prohibits starvation in non-international armed conflicts and the Resolution at the United Nations Security Council introducing new measures to act swiftly when armed conflict threatens to cause a food crisis. All such measures point to global humanitarian obligations that are not being met[113].

A shift occurred when the Declaration of Geneva was debated by the League of Nations in 1924. From being a charitable concept alone, the idea of children became more of a political one as well. Although children were at first viewed as an object of charity, Eglantyne Jebb discovered that the political scene of the League of Nations and, later, the United Nations[114] became a means to advance children’s rights and well-being.

 

Stanley Cohen[115] thought that people who refuse to look away from atrocities or human suffering see themselves as having “a sense of self as part of a common humanity […] if they do not help, they feel a deep shame of passivity”. Eglantyne Jebb and her sister did not look away. The Declaration of Geneva promoted universal humanitarianism. Nevertheless, nowadays we are looking the other way, as Cohen described it, even though television and social media are bringing atrocities against children right into our living rooms and onto our iPhones.

The idea of discriminatory humanitarianism is alive and well. For instance, the BBC reported in February 2023[116] that the Syrian regime had finally given the go-ahead for the delivery of humanitarian aid to all parts of the country in response to the earthquake. Yet they still resisted opening more border crossings that would let aid in to those they considered to be rebels. Stephen Hopgood, who studied humanitarianism and the post-liberal world order, asked the following questions: “must treating everyone similarly, or according to need, be a requirement of all forms of humanitarianism? If so, doesn’t that commit us to the most basic rule of the liberal order – non-discrimination?” He thinks that this is linked to “the liberal-world-order version of humanitarian action”[117]. I believe this is something worth fighting for. But are we fighting a battle that has already been lost? Reading Hopgood did not make me feel optimistic: the “foundations of universal liberal norms and global governance are crumbling”[118], he states, continuing with “What seemed like a dawn is in fact a sunset”[119].

With a land war in Europe once again, the Middle East close to all-out war, and the rising star of China, accompanied by the changing balance of power and the rise of dictatorial regimes, the principle of universalism to which the Declaration of Geneva contributed is in danger. There are signs that China is striving for an alternative human rights model that would put not universality but the “development of States”[120] and recognition of cultural differences at the centre. No wonder children’s rights are in a “polycrisis”[121].

In this context, the Declaration of Geneva and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols, which were built on the Declaration of Geneva, are more important than ever. In the years 1989–2010, we seemed to be intoxicated by the success of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. Then, there was an almost universal ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but now it suddenly looks as if we are sailing against the wind. For many people, the principles of humanitarianism and universalism that underpinned the Declaration of Geneva and the obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law are beacons of hope. One hundred years since the Declaration of Geneva was adopted by the League of Nations, it has become clear that we still need to fight for these principles and for the children’s rights that were formulated in 1989 in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Footnotes

[1] This chapter is an adaptation of a lecture given in Luxembourg on 23 February 2023. The event, marking 100 years of children’s rights, was organised by the Ombudsman for Children and Adolescents in Luxembourg. I am grateful to Charel Schmit, the Ombudsman, for the opportunity to speak on the occasion of the 100-year anniversary of the Declaration of Geneva.

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

[3] There is also another ‘Declaration of Geneva’. That declaration was adopted by the World Medical Association at a meeting in Geneva in 1948 and deals with medical-ethical principles.

[4] Eric Alterman, “The Decline of Historical Thinking,” New Yorker, 4 February 2019.

[5] Bas Heijne, “Schaf geschiedenis niet af,” NRC, 21 May 2016, https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/05/21/schaf-geschiedenis-niet-af-1619496-a377750.

[6] Willem Koops, “Het kind als de spiegel der beschaving,” Studium Generale Magazine 2 (2013): 26–28.

[7] Philip Veerman, The Rights of the Child and the Changing Image of Childhood (Martinus Nijhoff, 1992).

[8] Philippe Ariès, L’Enfant et la Vie Familale sous l’Ancien Regime (Plon, 1960).

[9] John Tobin, The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Commentary (Oxford University Press, 2019), 34–37.

[10] Tobin, UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 36.

[11] Joëlle Droux, “L’internationalisation de la protection de l’enfance: acteurs, concurrences et projects transnationaux (1900–1925),” Critique Internationale 3, no. 52 (2011) : 17–33.

[12] Veerman, Rights of the Child. See: chap. 6, “Eglantyne Jebb: The World is My Country” and chap. 10, § 1, “The Declaration of Geneva”.

[13] Francesca M. Wilson, Rebel Daughter of a Country House: The Life of Eglantyne Jebb, Founder of The Save the Children Fund (George Allen and Unwin, 1967).

[14] Philip Veerman, “Janusz Korczak and the Rights of the Child,” Concern 62 (Spring 1987): 7–9.

[15] Clare Mulley, The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb (OneWorld, 2009).

[16] Philip Veerman, “In the Shadow of Janusz Korczak: The Story of Stefania Wilczynska,”
The Melton Journal 23 (Spring 1990): 8–9. Ms Stefa supported Korczak and made sure the orphanage ran like a Swiss watch.

[17] Mulley, Woman Who Saved the Children, 303.

[18] Mulley, Woman Who Saved the Children, 303.

[19] Eglantyne Jebb – The Victorian Activist! HistoryWorks, http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/history-stories/eglantyne-jebb.

[20] See: Linda Mahood, “Feminists, Politics and Children’s Charity: The Formation of the Save the Children Fund,” Voluntary Action 5, no. 1 (2002): 71–88. Dorothy (whose husband was the Liberal politician Charles Roden Buxton, who switched to the Labour Party in 1917 and, like Dorothy, became a Quaker) was also involved in activities that aimed to get humanitarian aid to the Balkans.

[21] Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, Years of Adventure 1874–1920 (MacMillan, 1952), 257. See also: Dominique Marshall, “Children’s Rights and Children’s Action in International Relief and Domestic Welfare: The Work of Herbert Hoover Between 1914 and 1950,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1, no. 3 (2008): 351–388.

[22] Hoover, Memoirs, 337.

[23] New Tactics in Human Rights, https://www.newtactics.org.

[24] Gillian Wilson, “The ‘White Flame,’” World’s Children (September 1976): 6.

[25] Jean-Georges Lossier, “Tribute to the memory of Eglantyne Jebb,” International Review of the Red Cross (1976): 543–551.

[26] Since March 2021 there has been a Parc Eglantyne Jebb at the heart of Geneva. On 7 February 2024, her remains were reburied at the Cemetery of Kings in Geneva (preserved for dignitaries who promoted Geneva) at a ceremony where members of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child spoke.

[27] Emily Baughan, Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and the Empire (University of California Press, 2021).

[28] Emily Baughan and Juliano Fiori, “Save the Children, the Humanitarian Project, and the Politics of Solidarity: Reviving Dorothy Buxton’s Vision,” Disasters 39, no. 2 (2015): 129–145.

[29] Wilson, Rebel Daughter of a Country House.

[30] Mulley, Woman who Saved the Children.

[31] Waltraut Kerber-Ganse, “Eglantyne Jebb – A Pioneer of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” International Journal of Children’s Rights 23, no. 2 (2015): 272–282.

[32] Wilson, “White Flame,” 6.

[33] Veerman, Rights of the Child, 87–92 and 155–159.

[34] Petà Dunstan, Campaigning for Life: A Biography of Dorothy Frances Buxton (Lutterworth, 2018).

[35] Baughan and Fiori, “Save the Children,” 132.

[36] Victoria Bunsen, Charles Roden Buxton: A Memoir (George Allen & Unwin, 1948).

[37] Charles Roden Buxton, In a Russian Village (The Labour Publishing Company, 1922).

[38] Baughan and Fiori, “Save the Children,” 133.

[39] Lara Bolzman, “The Advent of Child Rights on the International Scene and the Role of the Save the Children International Union 1920–1945,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 927, no. 4 (2009): 26–36.

[40] I found information about the Save the Children International Union on LONSEA.org (the League of Nations Search Engine).

[41] Mulley, Woman Who Saved the Children, 274.

[42] Shai M. Dromi, Above the Fray: The Red Cross and the Making of the Humanitarian NGO Sector (University of Chicago Press, 2020), 118–119. Ador was president of Switzerland in 1919.

[43] Dominique Marshall, “The Construction of Children as an Object of International Relations: The Declaration of Children’s Rights and the Child Welfare Committee of the League of Nations, 1900–1924,” The International Journal of Children’s Rights 7, no. 2 (1999): 103–147.

[44] Marshall, “Construction of Children,” 104.

[45] Marshall, “Construction of Children,” 104. See also: Joëlle Droux, “Children and Youth: A Central Cause in the Circulatory Mechanisms of the League of Nations (1919–1939),” Prospects 45, no. 1 (2015): 63–76.

[46] Linde Lindkvist, “Rights for the World’s Children: Rädda Barnen and the Making of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Nordic Journal of Human Rights 36, no. 3 (2018): 287–303.

[47] Frans Verhagen, 1923 het jaar van de omslag (Boom uitgeverij, 2022).

[48] Voker Ullrich, Deutschland 1923: Das Jahr Am Abgrund (C.H. Beck, 2023).

[49] Conan Fischer, The Ruhr Crisis, 1923–1924 (Oxford University Press, 2003).

[50] Bolzman, “Advent of Child Rights,” 26–36.

[51] Veerman, Rights of the Child, 281, 435–437, 318–319, 438, 325–328, and 439–443.

[52] Georges Werner, “Remise de la ‘Déclaration de Genève’ au Conseil d’Etat de Genève pour les Archives,” Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge 6, no. 63 (1924): 155–156.

I found information on Georges Werner and the Save the Children International Union on LONSEA.org (the League of Nations Search Engine). According to Andrée Morier, “The Declaration of the Rights of the Child,” International Review of the Red Cross 26 (1963): 229.

[53] Veerman, Rights of the Child, 439–443.

[54] “How the Declaration Was Born,” International Child Welfare Review, no. 7 (1970): 40.

[55] “How the Declaration,” 40.

[56] Mulley, Woman Who Saved the Children, 305.

[57] Zoe Moody, Les Droits de l’Enfant. Genèse, institutionnalisatiion et diffusion (1924–1989) (Éditions Alphil-Presses universitaires Suisses, 2016), 109, 110.

[58] Moody, Les Droits de l’Enfant, 109, 110.

[59] Moody, Les Droits de l’Enfant, 109, 110.

[60] Moody, Les Droits de l’Enfant, 109, 110.

[61] Moody, Les Droits de l’Enfant, 306.

[62] Morier, “Declaration of the Rights of the Child,” 229.

[63] Moody, Les Droits de l’Enfant, 111. Moody states that the appointed editorial committee consisted of Werner (a law professor at the University of Geneva), Clouzot (director of the International Review of the Red Cross) and William Andrew MacKenzie (treasurer of the ISCU), with Eglantyne Jebb as the chair.

[64] Mulley, Woman Who Saved the Children, 306.

[65] Philip Veerman, “Le jour où les enfants sont devenus sujets,” LeTemps, 29 October 2012.

[66] As quoted by Geraldine van Bueren in The International Law on the Rights of the Child (Kluwer Academic Publishers/Martinus Nijhoff, 1995), 7.

[67] Moody, Les Droits de l’Enfant, 112.

[68] According to Georges Werner.

[69] Pierre Descaves, Quand La radio s’appelait “Tour Eiffel” (Table Ronde, 1963).

[70] Marshall, “Construction of Children,” 130.

[71] Marshall, “Construction of Children,” 131.

[72] Marshall, “Construction of Children.”

[73] Records of the Fifth Assembly, League of Nations Official Journal (1924), § 23 ¶ 179. See also: Resolution of the Assembly, 26 September 1924, League of Nations Official Journal (October 1924), § 21 ¶ 42–43.

[74] Marshall, “Construction of Children,” 133.

[75] Marshall, “Construction of Children,” 128.

[76] Marshall, “Construction of Children,” 130.

[77] The World’s Children, 3, no. 3 (April 1923): 111. See: Veerman, Rights of the Child, 218, note 22.

[78] Van Bueren, International Law, 7.

[79] Van Bueren, International Law, 7.

[80] Eliska Chanlett and G. M. Morier, “Declaration of the Rights of the Child,” International Child Welfare Review 22, no. 1 (1968): 4. Chanlett and Morier state that the declaration “went a step further than Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles, which already mentions in its Preamble the protection of the young”.

[81] Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 298.

[82] Cabanes, Great War, 297.

[83] A critical voice in the field of human rights is David Kennedy (of Harvard Law School), the author of The Dark Side of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism (Princeton University Press, 2004).

[84] Alexander W. Siege and Sheldon H. White, “The Child Study Movement: Early Growth and Development of the Symbolized Child,” Advances in Child Development 17 (1982): 233–285.

[85] Brigitte Boswinkel, coordinator of the Dutch Child’s Rights Collective. I am grateful for her input in this part of the chapter.

[86] Philip Veerman, “Is Religion a Friend or Foe of Children’s Rights?” In Droits de l’énfant et croyances religieuses: Autonomie, éducation, tradition, ed. P. D. Jaffé, N. Langenegger Roux, Z. Moody, Ch. Nanchen, and J. Zermatten (Université de Genève, Institut International des Droits de l’énfant, 2019), 80–93.

[87] “States Parties recognise the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development”.

[88] A homeless, neglected person, especially a child.

[89] Eglantyne Jebb, International Responsibilities for Child Welfare (Save the Children International Union, 1927), 7.

[90] Edward Fuller, “Great Britain and the Declaration of Geneva,” The World’s Children 5, no. 2 (1924): 57.

[91] Cabanes, Great War, 292.

[92] Fuller, “Great Britain and the Declaration,” 75.

[93] Cabanes, Great War, 295.

[94] Alex De Waal, “Famine in Gaza: An Example of the Global Humanitarian Crisis,” The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 119, no. 6 (2024): 1383–1385.

[95] Philip Veerman and Lesia Kop, “Opinie: Laat kinderen en jongeren zoveel mogelijk meepraten als volwaardige burgers,” De Volkskrant, 31 July 2004, https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/opinie-laat-kinderen-en-jongeren-zoveel-mogelijk-meepraten-als-volwaardige-burgers~b3d22c88e/.

[96] UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment 1 on the Aims of Education, UN doc. CRC/GC/2001/1.

[97] Cabanes, Great War, 296.

[98] Jeroen Den Blijker, “Wie denkt er aan de allerkleinsten?” Trouw , 15 February 2023, 6.

[99] Michael Aaronson, “Are Children’s Rights History?,” LSE blog, 1 April 2019,

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2019/01/childrens-rights.

[100] “L’enfant doit être assisté en dehors de toute consideration de race, de nationalité et de croyances”.

[101] See: Moody, Les Droits de l’Enfant, 110.

[102] Moody, Les Droits de l’Enfant, 129.

[103] Moody, Les Droits de l’Enfant, 110.

[104] “The Minimum shall not be less than the age of completion of compulsory schooling and in any case not be less than 15 years,” as stated in International Labour Organization, Minimum Age Convention, 26 June 1973, no. 138, UNTS 14862, art. 2, ¶ 3. Other International Labour Organization conventions on working age that were already in place included the Convention dealing with the Minimum Age for Work in Industry (1919), the Minimum Age Convention for Work at Sea (1920), the Minimum Age Convention for Work in Agriculture (1921) and the Minimum Age Convention concerning Trimmers and Stokers (1921).

[105] Elizabeth Faulkner and Conrad Nyamutata, “Decolonisation of Children’s Rights,” International Journal of Children’s Rights 28, no. 1 (2022): 66–88.

[106] Thanks to Brigitte Boswinkel for her input here.

[107] Cabanes, Great War, 293.

[108] Fuller, “Great Britain and the Declaration,” 116.

[109] Veerman, Rights of the Child, 397.

[110] Child labour, however, has been debated before in the International Labour Organization.

[111] This is an Optional Protocol on the rights to early childhood education, free pre-primary education and free secondary education.

[112] Human Rights Council A/HRC/56/L.8/Rev.1, at ¶ 5 (8 July 2024).

[113] De Waal, “Famine in Gaza,” 1383–1385.

[114] Regional forums such as the African Union became important too.

[115] Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering (Polity Press, 2001).

[116] Lyse Doucet, “Crisis upon Crisis: Why it’s Hard to Get Help to Syria after Earthquake,” BBC News, 11 February 2023.

[117] Stephen Hopgood, “When the Music Stops: Humanitarianism in a Post-Liberal World Order,” Journal of Humanitarian Affairs 1, no. 1 (2019): 13.

[118] Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights (Cornell University Press, 2013).

[119] Hopgood, Endtimes.

[120] Adviesraad internationale Vraagstukken, Mensenrechten: Kernbelang in een geopolitiek krachtenveld (Advisory Council for International Affairs, 2022).

[121] Ann Skelton, International Children’s Rights in Polycrisis: Interconnected Pathways to Social Justice and a Sustainable Future (lecture, University Leiden, 12 April 2024).