International Organizations as Advocates for Children’s Rights: Why, How and With What Effects

Sammanfattning

Since the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989, children’s rights have increasingly been integrated into international relations. The number of international organizations (IOs) that promote state compliance with children’s rights has also increased. Why do IOs adopt children’s rights norms? What explains the tactics that IOs use to pressure states to comply with children’s rights? And to what degree do different IO pressure tactics affect state compliance with children’s rights? The dissertation presented in this DDB answers these questions through four self-contained essays, and a particular focus on the European Union (EU). It finds that several global regimes affect which children’s rights norms IOs prioritize. Moreover, EU external policy has adopted children’s rights but not mainstreamed the issue, due to the preferences of different actors and institutional factors. Case evidence shows that IOs have strategic reasons to treat children’s rights as areas of common ground vis-à-vis autocratic regimes. Finally, state compliance with children’s rights is affected by international factors (membership in a regional human rights court and development aid), and national factors (women's political participation, religious and legal context). These findings have implications for debates on mainstreaming as a policy design, IO pressure for human rights and children’s rights governance.