ABSTRACT
While the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides some guidance as to who is a child under international law, 1 the European Convention does not address specifically the age at which a person may enjoy its rights. Moreover, the line between ability and entitlement is blurred in children’s rights, given that the age at which a child is entitled to enjoy Convention rights may be different from the age at which s/he is capable of enjoying them. 2 Notwithstanding that parents may be able to exercise some children’s rights on their behalf, the issue is complicated further by the fact that the term children includes both the very young and those nearing adulthood, ignoring that not all such persons have the capacity to enjoy Convention rights, and that the ability to exercise those rights is acquired progressively. In the light of these conceptual difficulties, therefore, it is not surprising that neither the Commission nor the Court have attempted or found it necessary to identify a point in time after which children can be said to enjoy Convention rights. In the same way, they have failed to show support for the view that a minimum age limit should apply to the application of the Convention to children. The result is that there is neither an express nor an implicit limit on the application of Convention rights to children. This is reinforced by Article 1, which guarantees these rights to everyone and Article 14, which prohibits discrimination in the enjoyment of Convention rights on many grounds, including age. 3 Instead, the Strasbourg bodies decide each case on its merits, and conveniently leave the problematic issue of whether a child has the capacity to exercise Convention rights to the circumstances of each case.
