Human rights tend to focus on the relationship between the individual and the state - the individual is the rights-holder, the state is the duty-holder. Children's rights bring a third player much more into the picture, namely the parents. Although, legally speaking, they are not duty-holders under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, parents do have a number of responsibilities under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other human rights instruments. Child rearing may still be considered by many to be within the private domain, i.e. a matter of concern only within the relationship between children and their parents, with the exception of instances of child abuse or neglect. However, States may be obligated to turn parental responsibilities into national legal duties if this is needed to improve the legal and social position of children. In this volume, child-rearing responsibilities are examined in the light of children's rights and other human rights. All the contributions focus in particular on the proposal to introduce an upbringing (or parenting) pledge. The upbringing pledge contains not only a statement of lasting commitment towards the child, but also an explicit declaration of commitment to respect and promote the rights of the child both as a person and as a human being who is utterly dependent upon parents for wellbeing and the development of his or her personality. By means of the upbringing pledge as a child rights-based social institution, the responsibilities of society and the state towards both parents and children are re-affirmed as well.
Wouter Vandenhole is an internationally recognized expert in transnational human rights obligations and in human rights and development. He has been invited as guest lecturer to universities all over the world. He serves on the editorial board of several international journals, among which the Journal of Human Rights Practice and Human Rights and International Legal Discourse. He has taken up management functions in European research and teaching networks: he was the chair of the Research Networking Programme, Beyond Territoriality: Globalization and Transnational Human Rights Obligations (GLOTHRO), funded by the European Science Foundation (2010-2014); he was the vice-chair of the COST Action The Role of the EU in UN Human Rights Reform (2009-2013); and is a member of the executive committee of the Children's Rights Education Academic Network, funded by the Life Long Learning Programme of the European Commission (2012-2015). He is the lead convenor of an international summer course on Human Rights for Development. Wouter Vandenhole holds the chair in human rights and the UNICEF chair in children's rights at the faculty of law of the University of Antwerp since 2007. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Tilburg University (Veni Grant) from 2005 to 2007, and a senior teaching assistant at the European Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation in 2002-2003. From 1995 to 2005, he was a researcher at the University of Leuven. BA in Philosophy, University of Leuven (Belgium), LL.B., LL.M. University of Leuven (Belgium), LL.M. in Law in Development, University of Warwick (UK); Ph.D. University of Leuven (Belgium).
Jan CM Willems (1952) studied philosophy (Florida, USA; 1971-1972), law (Nijmegen, The Netherlands; 1972-1979), and psychology (Antwerp, Belgium; 1992-1995). He holds a law degree from Radboud University (international law and diplomatic history; 1979), and a PhD degree from Maastricht University (children's rights and child maltreatment; 1998). From 1980-1981, he worked at the Department of Public Law of Tilburg University. In 1981, he started work on the Committee to found a new law faculty at Maastricht University. During the Faculty's first two decades, he was teaching in the field of war and peace (history of international law, Hugo Grotius), and of racial discrimination (xenophobia and human rights). In the late eighties, he shifted his main field of research to the rights of women and the rights of the child in relation to child (sexual) abuse, neglect and exploitation. Presently, in addition to teaching human rights and rights of the child, he is conducting research on the joint responsibility of the state, parents and society in the upbringing of (young) children, with a special focus on the rights of newborn persons. Between 2002 and 2009 he was the first Dutch Chair holder on the International Rights of the Child at VU University Amsterdam. His expertise within the field of children's rights is transgenerational discrimination, or childism (denialism in relation to the failure of states to prevent ill-treatment of children at the hands of their parents or carers), and structural prevention of child maltreatment (integrated SMECC approach).
