Abstract
This article is concerned with the obligation of State Parties to report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, and discusses the politics involved in the reporting process, showing what strategy each state chooses to employ. An empirical study shows that the reported improvements in children's rights depend not only on the State Party's economic means, but also on its will to report truthfully. Based on John Rawls' ‘The Law of the Peoples’, I develop four ideal types of state with regard to the reporting process, and present game-theoretical explanations for their chosen strategies. The outcome is that a burdened state, illustrated by Burkina Faso, will tell the truth about children's rights in the state; a high-risk state, illustrated by Guatemala, will conceal or avoid eliciting sensitive information for its reports; a quasi-established liberal democracy, illustrated by Estonia, will also conceal information that shows its child rights record is not as clean as that of a liberal democracy; and a liberal democracy, illustrated by New Zealand, will tell the truth, provide all available information and point out existing problems. The article ends with a discussion about how to take the political factor out of the reporting process.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.