Poverty and the Political Powerlessness of Children

  1. Gottfried Schweiger
  2. Mar Cabezas
Revista:
Astrolabio: revista internacional de filosofía

ISSN: 1699-7549

Año de publicación: 2017

Número: 19

Páginas: 111-122

Tipo: Artículo

Otras publicaciones en: Astrolabio: revista internacional de filosofía

Resumen

Children are affected by poverty more often than adults, and growing up in poverty has severe and long-lasting negative consequences for a child’s well-being. However, children are also in a very weak position, both to escape poverty on their own and to publicly and politically enforce their claims to a better life. Accordingly, children living in poverty are victims of two intersecting forms of powerlessness: they are children and they are poor. In this article, we analyze this particular type of powerlessness from a children’s rights perspective and argue that, in order to effectively restore justice to children in poverty, the State has to implement a comprehensive children’s rights regime. We argue that the State is obliged to consider children’s best interests in all its policies – even those that are not directly related to children – in order to compensate for the lack of political agency during childhood. This demand reflects the particular social and political status of children, namely: that they are dependent on others for their well-being, that childhood is a phase of particular vulnerability and that (young) children lack certain competencies that are needed to enforce their claims.