[MUSIC] In this video, we will explain the particularities of the field of children's rights studies as compared to the broader social field of children's rights. So I will emphasize why we speak of studies in this field, and also say a few words about the interdisciplinary features of the study field. Now, why do we speak of children's rights studies? At University of Geneva, I work in a center which is called Center for Children's Rights Studies. And I think it's important that this word studies is added to our name. I will explain in a few words why that is. Now, first, children's rights and the idea that children have rights was of course not an invention by academics. It became inscribing in actions in the field leading up to the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. And when in academia that position on the importance of children's rights was taken up, initially it was mostly from a legal and philosophical perspective. So questions that were asked was, well, for instance a philosophical questions is, why should children have rights and what should be the rights of children? Or more legal questions like, what is the content and normative value of the provisions that are inscribe in the convention of the rise of the child? Other questions could deal with the implementation mechanism or the monitoring of the conventions on the rights of the child. Now, that was in the early years when academics were interested in children's rights. Now, overtime more and more fields and disciplines became interested in this children's rights reality and also sociologists, anthropologists, or political scientists and many others became involved in studying the field of children rights. The questions asked, however, slightly evolved and we're no longer only dealing with the legal and philosophical context of children's rights, but also with broader questions, like for instance, what are the consequences of children's rights in the social practice? Who are these child right defenders for instance, where do they come from? And are also children themselves involved in depending their rights. Why is it that certain rights gain more attention than others? On this last question, we've done a piece of research in our center. And for instance, we've discovered that over a period of 20 years, between 1989 and 2009, the topic of street children, which was very important in the beginning of the 90s lost attention. So international organizations, who at the beginning of the 90s spoke a lot about street children by the end of the year 2009 hardly spoke of it. There was a shift in attention and we ask questions how comes. How comes that people speak less of a particular right or a particular category of children, like the case of children in street situations over a period of 20 years? Now, to be able to answer this questions, you need to take a bit distance from the field itself. It is difficult to be at the same time promoter of children's rights, and then also to study them. This is where the words studies come in. Studies points at a reflexive position. Why are the things as they are? And so, it's hence also a critical position. Why is this NGO promoting these particular rights and not others? Or why do children have played only such a small role in defending their rights? And how was it that certain rights were put on the international agenda rather than others? So children's rights without the word studies is a political, social project in a broad sense. It is about striving for justice to make a better world for children, to defend children's human rights. So it's about engineering. One thing to move society in one direction, in a particular direction. Children's rights studies deals with the studies of these endeavors. It is more about enlightenment about understanding what happens. Both are of course needed. But children's rights studies, they are the perspective of academics who are concerned to carefully explore, understand, explain the world rather than direct policy making or social struggles for those to remake the world. Now, why do we call this an interdisciplinary field of studies? This could be illustrated if we look at two major journals of the field. The first is the International Journal of Children's Rights which list a number of disciplines that all participate in the journal. So research is coming from diverse range of fields published in the journal to discuss children's rights to contribute to their great understanding. For instance, law legal and political philosophy, psychology, psychiatrist, educational theory, social administrations, social work, social anthropology or even theology or history all contributes through this journal. In another journal, which is called, child hood, global, a journal of global child research. Researches come from, well initially, sociology, but then it was also complemented by views from other disciplines who all. Discuss childhood studies, but also on children rights. They come from social and typology geography besides sociology, political science, political economy and so forth. So in the next video, My colleague Frederic, he will explain a bit more how these disciplines can work together to better understand children's rights. Now, here, I have highlighted that children's rights are not only important as a field of social changes where advocates, policy makers, judges, administrators make policy changes or legal changes in the field of children's rights, but it is also an emerging and exciting field of interdisciplinary study. It approaches children's rights from a more reflexive and also more critical perspective. [MUSIC]