Children: From Rights to Citizenship

• Author: Felton Earls
• Date: 01 January 2011
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716210383637
• Published date: 01 January 2011
• Subject Matter: Articles

6 ANNALS, AAPSS, 633, January 2011

This article introduces the themes of children’s rights

and citizenship and surveys the authors’ contributions

to this volume of The Annals. The volume marks the

20th anniversary of the United Nations General

Assembly’s adoption of the Convention on the Rights of

the Child (CRC). As the most widely ratified of all

human rights covenants, adoption of the CRC repre-

sents a landmark achievement in the history of child-

hood. Yet there remains a noticeable gap in its

implementation. The United States has not ratified the

CRC. The contributions to this volume take the CRC

as a starting point along the path of achieving functional

citizenship for children. Issues of child protection,

political maturity, deliberative democracy, and intergen-

erational nondomination are covered. Several examples

of empirical research on children’s participation in social

and political matters are provided. Recommendations

are made to advance the case of child citizenship over

the near term. This includes the need to urge the United

States to ratify the CRC.

Keywords: Convention on the Rights of the Child

(CRC); ratification; intergenerational

citizenship

On November 9, 2009, a group of scholars

assembled at the House of the American

Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) in

Cambridge, Massachusetts, to refine and pos-

sibly to expand their notions of children as

citizens. The meeting, staged as a workshop

to prepare for this volume of The Annals, pro-

vided a moment to consider the connection

Children:

From Rights

to Citizenship

By

FELTON EARLS

Introduction

Felton Earls is a professor of social medicine at Harvard

Medical School and a professor of human behavior and

development at Harvard School of Public Health. His

interests span child mental health, epidemiology, and

human rights. From 1990 to 2005, he was the principal

investigator for the Project on Human Development in

Chicago Neighborhoods, a multilevel, longitudinal

study on the causes and consequences of children’s

exposure to violence. His current project, the Ecology of

HIV/AIDS and Child Mental Health in Tanzania, is a

community-level randomized control trial aimed at

strengthening children’s capacity to promote commu-

nity health in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

DOI: 10.1177/0002716210383637