International human rights law and the child's upbringing: Reconciling children's rights, parental control rights and state interests

This thesis investigates whether and how international human rights law (IHRL) reconciles children's rights with parental control rights and state interests in the child's upbringing. To answer these questions, it first originally identifies four normative models on the child's upbringing drawing from moral, legal, and political theory, and then assesses which of these models find reflections in IHRL. In so doing, it offers the most comprehensive account of the IHRL practice concerning the child's upbringing to date, providing an analysis of not only the drafting histories of human rights instruments, but also the general comments and the case law of the human rights systems in Europe, the Americas, Africa and the United Nations. This thesis shows that IHRL has overtime endorsed more than one normative model. The central argument of the thesis is twofold. First, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has been central to the endorsement of the model combining the liberal conception of children's rights and the fiduciary conception of parental rights. This model assigns multiple functions to the state, endorsing not only a minimal state when intervening into the parent-child relationship but also supportive and prescriptive roles, alongside recognizing autonomy-related and civic interests of the state in education. Second, the thesis indicates that the legal practice, particularly in adjudication, deviates from this model. All IHRL organs are not fully committed to the liberal and fiduciary conceptions as they do not give sufficient weight to the child's substantive rights and the limitations of parental rights.