Description
On March 17, 2023, Vladimir Putin and the Commissioner for Children’s rights were indicted for the war crimes of unlawful deportation of children. This indictment, which invoked the child to pursue legal accountability, is informed by the protectionist mandate of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Children (UNCRC). At the same time, children in Gaza are increasingly under threat, with thousands killed, injured and displaced. Despite the scale of these threats, the international community has largely stalled in its response to protecting these children. Thus, the experiences of these children illustrate an abdication of the international community's responsibility. Drawing on examples from the international response to children’s experiences in these conflicts, this paper examines the limits of the responsibility obligation as a mandate for action. It asks: How can we reframe well-worn discourses on responsibility to and for children? I suggest that the international responses reveal that the politics of childhoods in international law serves to further the agendas of external actors rather than respond to children’s individual needs. I argue that to fulfill its obligations, global governance architecture must reconstitute discourses of responsibility to acknowledge the ownership that children possess as citizens.
