International Children's Rights

Catalog description

This 3-credit elective course serves as an introduction to international children's rights. It provides an overview of international human rights principles and procedures affecting children, with special emphasis on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. With this baseline understanding, you will explore thematic topics affecting children, including issues such as corporal punishment, child marriage, child labor, international adoption and abduction, discrimination, child soldiers, environmental challenges and child participation. Issues of equity, leadership and advocacy are identified and discussed throughout the course. As you proceed through the material, you are asked to remember and reflect on the fact that the world's most vulnerable children, those who most need the protection of international human rights law, are poor children of color. Please hold that thought near to you as you examine the range of issues that children experience around the globe and the potential for international human rights to respond to those issues.