Quantifications of the Rights of the Child: Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

Research on human rights has often focused on civil, political, and personal integrity rights to the exclusion of other categories of rights. Children’s rights have been one of these often-overlooked categories, at least in part because of the much more recent creation of relevant international law. While many practitioners do work to further children’s enjoyment of their rights, this has not been reflected with widespread, global measurement efforts by quantitative scholars. In this review, we first argue for the importance of measuring children’s rights. We then present several paths for translating international law into quantitative measurements, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each approach generally and with regards to children’s rights more specifically. We explore measurement gaps of children’s rights that remain—coverage of the CRC and across countries and time; considerations of progressive realization and maximum resources; the incorporation of children’s developing capacities; and children’s participation. And we close with recommendations regarding potential avenues for future work on this subject.