ABSTRACT
Twenty-one years after the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) entered into force, and largely due to its infl uence, the international landscape of child law and policy has changed beyond recognition and continues to change. The CRC is the most rapidly and widely ratifi ed of all the international human rights treaties. It was adopted by the UN General Assembly without a vote on 20 November 1989, and less than a year later, on 2 September 1990, it entered into force having been ratifi ed by the requisite twenty states. It now has 193 States Parties, leaving only two countries – the USA and Somalia – still to ratify. (However, the USA signed it on 16 February 1995 and Somalia signed on 9 May 2002. In November 2009 it was announced that Somalia was making plans to ratify, while the USA was undertaking a review of the CRC with a view to possible ratifi cation.)
While far from perfect in either its content or its implementation, the CRC illustrates, among other things, the impact that international law can have and its capacity to evolve over time and in different contexts.
