In November 2024, Visiting Professor Maria Grahn-Farley, Coordinator of the HRJust project, published the book Child Rights, Legal Theory and Social Advocacy with Cambridge University Press. The book makes an important scholarly contribution to ongoing debates on children’s rights, legal theory, and the role of advocacy in shaping law and policy.
In this work, Professor Grahn-Farley examines how human rights are used by states and authorities when children to promote a national self-image of being a humanitarian superpower. The book introduces a new theoretical concept “Complex Intersectionality” in an effort to describe competing universal theoretical frames, in the intersection between socially constructed identities and the by law constructed child. Through a critical legal analysis, the book explores how children’s rights are framed, interpreted, and at times limited within legal systems that claim to act in the best interests of the child. By combining legal theory with social advocacy perspectives through the evolution of the child rights social movement, the book contributes valuable insights into how children’s rights can be more effectively safeguarded in law, policy, and practice during democratic backsliding.
More information about the book is available through Cambridge University Press.