United nations convention on the rights of the child and child well-being

Child well-being is mentioned rarely in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in spite of the fact the pairing of ‘children’s rights and well-being’ appears with increasing frequency in the discourse of policy makers, childhood advocates and researchers. This chapter considers the concept of child well-being through the disciplinary lens of human rights, with a particular focus on children’s rights as set out in the CRC. It explores the differences in the concepts of child rights and child well-being both in terms of their rationale and their scope and suggests that children’s rights standards, as politically negotiated agreements by states, are in many ways more limited in scope and aim than the normal aspirations of child well-being. This is followed by a discussion of the system for monitoring and measuring the implementation of children’s rights, with particular attention being paid to the specific characteristics of child rights indicators. These are distinguished from well-being indicators both in their substance (including, in particular, the need to focus on the activity of state actors and not just outcomes for children) and in the processes required to develop them (since a core element of child rights indicators will be the meaningful involvement of children at all stages). The chapter concludes by suggesting that the movements which have developed around these separate entities could be better aligned in order to advance the interests of children.