Developing the Right to Development

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides an unprecedented and comprehensive protection for the right to development of children, and more broadly, for child development. Thus far, little attention has been given in theory or in practice to the ways in which this protection should be realised. This paper suggests that the main reason for not fulfilling this promise to children is the challenges in defining “child development” as a legal concept, especially the utilisation of child development science in law. The paper suggests a number of ways to overcome these challenges.