Law Reform, Child Maltreatment and the un Convention on the Rights of the Child

Scholars and practitioners stress the need for systematic research on the implementation of the un Convention on the Rights of the Child (crc) and its potential impact on children’s rights. Our study focused on one aspect of implementation – law reform. Drawing primarily on reports to the crc Committee for 179 countries, results show for most countries, implementation is limited and focused far more on child-welfare than child-rights based legislation. The relationship of measures of law reform/legal regime (most notably, the existence of customary law and laws banning corporal punishment) to children’s experience of rights, child physical abuse and mortality, is analysed and theoretically grounded.