Children's rights movement

Rights
Theoretical distinctions
Claim rights and liberty rights Individual and group rights Natural rights and legal rights Negative and positive rights
Human rights
Civil and political Economic, social and cultural Three generations
Rights by beneficiary
Accused Animals Children Consumers Creditors Deaf Disabled Elders Family Farmers Fetuses Humans Indigenous Intersex Kings LGBT Transgender Men Minorities Parents Fathers Mothers Patients Peasants Plants Prisoners Robots States Students Victims Women Workers Youth
Other groups of rights
Assembly Association Asylum Civil liberties Digital Education Fair trial Food Free migration Health Housing Linguistic Movement Development Property Repair Reproductive Rest and leisure Self defense Self-determination of people Sexuality Speech Water and sanitation
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The Children's Rights Movement is a historical and modern movement committed to the acknowledgment, expansion, and/or regression of the rights of children around the world. This act laid several constitutional laws for the growth of a child's mental and physical health. (Not to be confused with Youth rights). It began in the early part of the last century and has been an effort by government organizations, advocacy groups, academics, lawyers, lawmakers, and judges to construct a system of laws and policies that enhance and protect the lives of children.^[1] While the historical definition of child has varied, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child asserts that "A child is any human being below the age of eighteen years, unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier."^[2] There are no definitions of other terms used to describe young people such as "adolescents", "teenagers" or "youth" in international law.^[3]

The concept of children having particular rights is a relatively new one. Traditional attitudes towards children tended to consider them as mere extensions of the household and 'owned' by their parents and/or legal guardian, who exerted absolute parental control.

Views began to change during the Enlightenment, when tradition was increasingly challenged and the value of individual autonomy and natural rights began to be asserted.^{[citation needed]}

The Foundling Hospital in London was founded in 1741 as a children's home for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children". Thomas Spence, an English political radical wrote the first modern defence of the natural rights of children in The Rights of Infants, published in 1796.^[4]