Romanian Courts and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Case Study

Romania has been a party to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child ( CRC ), 1989, since 1990, and since then the CRC is directly applicable by the courts and other state bodies. For a long time the country struggled to provide adequate protection for the rights of children. Well-known systemic problems affecting Romanian children were institutionalisation, inter-country adoptions, an inadequate child justice system, poverty, and discrimination, to name but a few. This article examines the application of the CRC by the courts, and the impact which this has had on the protection of children’s rights in Romania. The selected constitutional and judicial (i.e. ordinary courts) jurisprudence examined in the article shows that courts have only marginally provided impetus for systemic change, but have, however, contributed to the protection of individual rights. A few potential causes for this state of affairs – divided into factors relating to the justice system in Romania and CRC -related factors – are discussed.