Sharon Bessell
Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
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ABSTRACT
Rates of child poverty remain high in Australia, despite the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) thirty-five years ago. This paper explores the gap between the transformative potential of the UNCRC and the lived realities of children who are growing up in poverty. It analyses the ongoing contestation around children’s human rights in Australia and the failure to institutionalise the UNCRC. It argues that children’s human rights to an adequate standard of living, including sufficient food and shelter, to development and to healthcare have been consistently violated. Moreover, successive governments since the 1990s have adopted policies that have not only failed to reduce child poverty but have worsened the experiences of children who are growing up in contexts of poverty. Listening to children’s experiences of how poverty shapes and constrains their lives illuminates both the extent to which poverty is a violation of their human rights and the failure of successive governments to adopt rights-respecting anti-poverty policies.