Young people’s rights: children’s rights or adults’ rights

To which rights are young people entitled? Should they have full adult rights, or those of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC 1989) for everyone aged under 18-years? The UNCRC enshrines more than adults’ rights (extra provisions and protections) but also qualifies and modifies full adult autonomy rights. This article reviews how adult and child rights relate to young people, and then reviews how, and possibly why, everyone’s rights are being restricted by current policies. ‘The young people I work with make demands and choices and say, “It’s my right”, so that I have to give into them, even when I think it is not in their best interests.’ This kind of comment is often made. However, it misunderstands ‘rights’ and confuses them with wants and demands. Rights are both much more basic and also more complex that the quoted view assumes, as the first section reviews