The Child's Right to Identity and its Concrete Application: From the Viewpoint of Care Ethics

This article investigates how the child's right to identity could contribute to devising solutions to actual cases. According to Ruth Zafran, an Israeli scholar of family law, the child's right to identity can be applied on the basis of the ethics of care, which would lead to a “mediatory solution”. This kind of application of the right fits cases where there are two demands that are equally significant but frequently collide mutually; one is to protect the relationship between a child and his/her guardians, and the other is to esteem his/her right to raise a voice so that the children's interest shall not be prevailed in an unfair manner by the interests of adults concerned. In such cases, it is required to reconcile both demands by conciliating interests of the child and adults. Based on the above, this article inspects the way the child's right to identity should be applied to concrete cases and considers its significance