Civil Society Perspectives on Children’s Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Abstract

“This study analyses civil society organisations’ (cso s’) discourse on children’s rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (opt). This is a troubled context, for Israel – the ‘State Party’ to the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (crc), disputes that its obligations extend to the opt. In consequence, there has been a dearth of official data and scholarly attention to the situation. Discourse analysis of cso s’ reports to the UN’s monitoring mechanism, the Universal Periodic Review (upr), shows children are affected by a raft of violations including: sexual abuse, violence and inadequate access to health and education. The Israeli state’s engagement with the upr, whilst denying responsibility for the opt, raises questions about legitimation and performativity. The pathologies are compounded by state repression of civil society meaning that the upr is a singular means of highlighting children’s rights abuses in the Occupied Territories.