Youth and Children

Examining the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, this study analyzes each of its rights within the Canadian context?and finds Canada wanting. The argument contends that although the country’s expressed desire is to protect and care for its children, the reality is that young people?in Canada and around the world?often lack basic human rights. Illustrating how children are steeped in abuse from the education and justice systems, exploited by corporations and in the sex trade, and suffer from ill health and poverty, this volume also demonstrates that while the hearts of Canadians go out to oppressed youth in distant countries, very little sympathy is spent on the suffering of young people close to home. This survey explores these contradictory views, evincing that more must be done to ensure that children’s rights are upheld.

Bernard Schissel is a professor and head of the doctor of social sciences program at Royal Roads University. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia.