Children and their “Right to be Heard”: On a child-friendly politics in an age of polycrisis

Abstract

In an effort to illustrate both why and how children should be incorporated more fully into our world’s political proceedings, this article explores the utopian potential of Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 12 pertains to children’s “right to be heard.” More specifically, this article theorizes a radically inclusive approach to democracy described herein as a “caring,” “child-friendly” politics. This is a theory of politics that calls for children to be welcomed as equal citizens within our world’s various spaces of democracy. Accordingly, during a time beset by a complex series of overlapping, systemic global crises, this article reconsiders the possibility—a matter of hope—of allowing children to act as political equals alongside their adult counterparts. While climate change is the main international issue studied as a part of this article’s discussion of children and their agency, this piece of international political theory is ultimately about what it might mean for more radical political action to be taken to care for the world and those who will ultimately come to inherit it.