The (Dis)Ability of Child Rights

Abstract

This paper offers a deconstruction of the framing of childhood and child rights as ‘disability’, arguing for a strengthening of the legal personhood of children, based on the revolution of personhood and the re-making of the human condition in the disability rights movement. As the general debate on children’s legal capacity and standing tends to take place from within the traditional liberal and existing legal paradigms of children’s rights – which emphasise the legal disability of children and their lack of agency – it occurs in isolation from the broader theoretical debates on personhood and capacity. In re-imagining disability, new insights can be gained by reflecting on the scholarship from other perspectives, such as disability theory.