AN EXAMINATION OF CHILD RIGHTS PROTECTION UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS

Abstract

The international legal protection of child rights represents one of the most significant normative achievements of the modern human rights era, embodied most comprehensively in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) — the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. Employing doctrinal legal methodology, this article examines the architecture, scope, and implementation of child rights under international law, critically evaluating both the advances made and the persistent structural challenges that undermine the effective enjoyment of rights by children worldwide. The article analyses the foundational principles of the CRC, its Optional Protocols, and complementary instruments; interrogates key thematic challenges including child labour, children in armed conflict, child trafficking and sexual exploitation, the right to education, and children in migration; and evaluates the jurisprudential contributions of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. The article further examines emerging challenges in the digital environment and in the context of climate change, and concludes by identifying structural prospects for strengthening international child rights protection through enhanced monitoring, corporate accountability, and intersectoral integration.