NCJ Number
161809
Date Published
1996
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This paper examines whether children's rights in the Netherlands are compatible with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Abstract
The way in which the Dutch government values the Convention is primarily politically determined. The reservation it has made in the approval bill regarding social security is unnecessary, and in the new bills on family law and on child protection law, where the Dutch legal system is clearly incompatible with the Convention, no comment is made. Only in the field of criminal law has the Dutch government been consistent, at least in respect of the first part of Article 37. Regarding Article 40, it might even be concluded that the Convention has been abused. This has happened despite the clear and unequivocal text in the explanatory memorandum that accompanies the approval law, which states that those existing legal rules, incompatible with the Convention's Articles, must be changed so that any incompatibility is removed. The Dutch government has not critically evaluated Dutch legislation by the standards of the Convention because the current Dutch tendency is to attempt to satisfy as many demands of various groups as possible in the hope of achieving a consensus. In such a process, the position of children, who do not constitute a vocal pressure group, is weak. 9 notes