Multigenerational Citizenship: The Importance of Recognizing Children as National and International Citizens

DOI10.1177/0002716210383113
Date01 January 2011
AuthorGeraldine Van Bueren
Published date01 January 2011
Subject MatterArticles
30 ANNALS, AAPSS, 633, January 2011
This article discusses the author’s concept of multi-
generational citizenship, arguing that for citizenship
to be relevant for children, there needs to be a more
flexible and relational approach to citizenship.
Tom Paine’s theories are expanded upon, by exam-
ining the increasing acceptance, by both interna-
tional and regional fora in both political and human
rights, of a child’s autonomy in bringing complaints
to a human rights body. The article examines the
recent developments in the move toward establish-
ing a complaints mechanism under the Convention
on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and argues that
this is an important element of international child
citizenship. The article also examines the progress
made in national courts toward child citizenship,
which has helped to change the international con-
sensus on providing an international remedy for
breaches of child citizenship rights. The article
compares the growing acceptance of children as
international citizens by the European Court of
Human Rights and under the specially designed
African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the
Child’s complaints mechanism. Because of all these
developments, the author rejects the assumption
that regeneration is needed to reenergize the inter-
national social movement for children as citizens,
arguing that such pessimism is an oversimplification
of both the achievements and failures of the CRC.
Keywords: United Nations; children; communica-
tion procedure; child citizenship
The Emergence of Citizenship
as Multigenerational
Throughout history the concept of citizen-
ship has been a work in progress, generally
moving in a more inclusive direction. Indeed,
Multigenerational
Citizenship: The
Importance of
Recognizing
Children as
National and
International
Citizens
By
GERALDINE VAN BUEREN
Geraldine Van Bueren is a barrister and professor
of international human rights law in Queen Mary
College at the University of London and is a visiting
fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford. She was one of
the original drafters of the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child and was a
recipient of UNICEF’s Child Rights Lawyer Award.
She also serves as a commissioner on the UK’s
Equality and Human Rights Commission.
DOI: 10.1177/0002716210383113
MULTIGENERATIONAL CITIZENSHIP 31
when the movement has been retrogressive—with the refusal in the United States
to implement the Fourteenth Amendment to all Americans or confiscation of citi-
zenship from Jews in Germany and from South African citizens during apartheid—
it can be seen as a warning sign of even graver violations of human rights. Hence,
citizenship and human rights have a symbiotic, although not exclusive, relationship.1
According to Dahrendorf (1974), there is “no more a dynamic social figure in
modern history than the citizen”; yet at the time of the drafting of the Convention
on the Rights of the Child (CRC), children, if conceptualized at all as citizens,
were regarded as passive citizens. Children were, and to some extent still are,
similar in status to the metiokas of ancient Greece, “the alien residents who had
some but not all the attributes of citizenship” (Van Bueren 1998, 26).
Bellamy, Castiglione, and Santoro (2004, 6–7) discuss three approaches to the
facets of citizenship. Citizenship is identified with, first, the possession of indi-
vidual rights; second, a reciprocal relationship through membership of a national
community; and third, economic and political participation. A fourth facet, how-
ever, is developing, which is essential in a globalized world, and that is the capac-
ity to act on one’s own behalf and on behalf of others internationally and, in
particular, before international bodies.
All four facets of citizenship are equally important to children, as is the recon-
figuration of citizenship as multigenerational. By reconfiguring citizenship as
multigenerational,2 space is created for moving toward a concept of citizenship
that also embraces childhood. Historically, children have been measured against
adult models of citizenship. Such a flawed approach assumes that competence
and biological age are always correlative (see Archard 2003), but as Bauböck
(1995, 214) recognizes, for citizens, the concept of a right does not necessarily
imply that its bearer must be seen as an agent “fully capable of communicating
those of her own needs and interests.”
The development of multigenerational citizenship is the latest stage in the evo-
lution of citizenship from the Athenian exclusion of, inter alia, women and slaves
(Aristotle 2008),3 to the inclusion of women in the twentieth century.4 Since the
almost universal adoption of the CRC,5 any plausible legal or political theory
ought to consider multigenerational citizenship’s impact upon citizenship theories.
Multigenerational citizenship, like citizenship itself, at least in the terms of
social contract theory, carries with it the implementation of both rights and res-
ponsibilities. Rights and responsibilities of citizenship are a means for children to
directly increase their participation in both the national and global societies.
Indeed, de facto child citizenship responsibility already occurs in, for example,
the increasing number of child-headed households. But without a de jure recog-
nition of their citizenship responsibilities, children become more vulnerable and
not less. For child-headed households, access to social security payments and to
legal identity documents are essential for their education and survival and that of
their young families, yet frequently such access is only granted upon reaching
adulthood (Sloth-Nielsen 2005).
Childhood responsibilities are key to multigenerational citizenship, including
the voluntary assumption of the duty to contribute to public policy decisions.

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