The Introduction sets out the perspective of the Commentary on the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols. The first section of the chapter traces the origins of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the 1924 Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the 1959 UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child. The second section sets out a legal perspective on the CRC and its Optional Protocols (OPs), by outlining how these documents espouse a multi-tiered approach by placing parents and caregivers in a middle tier between the state and the individual right-holder children. The chapter explores children’s rights as human rights, both from a philosophical perspective and a legal technical perspective, as a part of various human rights systems and goes on to situate the CRC in international law. The third section explores how the CRC is implemented and how efforts for the realisation of children’s rights are undertaken at domestic, regional and international levels. The fourth section flags new issues that have arisen since the adoption of the CRC such as the rights of children in migration, in street situations as a part of the broader discussion on sustainability, identifying the gaps. The section also outlines ambiguities surrounding limitations of the CRC and addresses the issue of derogations. The fifth section contextualises children’s rights beyond the legal field by surveying non-legal approaches that have informed the CRC such as developmental approaches as well as their sociological and ethnographic critiques. The final section of the Introduction outlines the approach of this commentary with respect to the interpretation of the CRC and its OPs, including the sources used, disciplinary fields explored, the frameworks used in delineating obligations.
