The Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international human rights instruments recognize the right of the child to respect for the child’s human dignity and physical integrity and equal protection under the law.

Committee On The Rights Of The Child, General Comment No. 8, The Rights of the Child to Protection from Corporal Punishment 2006. http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/crc/comment8.html

Although dignity may be too complex scientifically to define,

Educationally it is a life-improving force humanizingly yours and mine.

Peace Linguist Francisco Cardoso Gomes de Matos, “On Defining Dignity” in Dignity: A Multidimensional View. Lake Oswego, OR: Dignity Press 2013, p.22

In this blog Professor Lucien Lombardo writes about the power of always supplementing discussions of children’s right to be free from physical punishment (and all rights) with discussions of children’s dignity.

Lucien is Professor Emeritus and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Old Dominion University in Virginia, USA. 

When engaging in discussions of children’s right to their physical integrity and freedom from physical punishment I always watch for discussions of children’s dignity.  I am most often disappointed. As a university teacher and advocate for children for over 30 years, I have learned much about the value of always making the connection between children’s rights and children’s dignity for preventing harm to children.

Discussing the rights of the child in the US is ‘aspirational’, since the US is the only country that has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child ( CRC). Even where the CRC has been ratified and where laws supporting CP have been eliminated ending the hitting of children in everyday life is difficult. (For example see: https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/fast-facts-violence-against-children-widespread-affecting-millions-globally)

This contradiction is highlighted when students ask, “If children have the right to have bad things not happen to them at the hands of adults, why do such things still happen so frequently? Why is corporal punishment so widely practiced?

To answer is necessary to see the disconnect and connection between rights and dignity and between law and human behavior.  Though rights and dignity operate in different spheres, behaviors that violate children’s rights also, and more personally, violate children’s dignity.

Human Rights specified in national constitutions, legislation and international agreements like the CRC are profoundly important. Rights (e.g. civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural) both limit government actions toward citizens and outline obligations governments should meet for their citizens. Rights operate in and through the spheres of government and law, where politics and power dominate. In relation to children, rights often operate in a competitive environment where children’s rights compete with parents’ or teachers’ rights. This is especially true of corporal punishment.

For human rights law to protect children, adults and children have to be aware that such rights exist. Violations (after harm has occurred) have to be made known to relevant authorities, investigations conducted, evidence gathered, and judgments made through various bureaucracies and courts.

DIGNITY, however, is different. Dignity is independent of rights Dignity does not depend on law or power. Dignity does not compete; Dignity is something everyone has regardless of status, accomplishment or age. . Dignity operates in the realm of human interaction and experience. Dignity gives personal meaning to experience. Children’s and everyone’s’ experiences define dignity as “… a life-improving force, humanizingly, yours and mine.” (See Gomes de Matos quote above).

Dignity is not something that needs to be defined in law, but  dignity is defined through the experience of children’s daily lives. Children’s dignity recognizes that children are everyday making their own lives (have agency), that children are doing children’s work (making sense of their environments and integrating experiences into the persons they are becoming). Dignity operates in the dimensions of physical and emotional safety, acceptance, acknowledgment, inclusion, participation, being listened to, among others. (See: Donna Hicks, Ten Essential Elements of Dignity:  https://livingjusticepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Ten-Essential-Elements-of-Dignity_p.203.pdf)

When supporting the dignity of children is part of our adult mandate, dignity operates in the realm of the relationship between adults and children and ‘before’ harm is  inflicted on a child. When parents and teachers recognize children’s dignity it shifts adult-child relationships from adult-centered control of children as property  to relationships seeking mutual understanding and respect. Acknowledging children’s dignity sees violence against and exploitation of children as violations of dignity not just a violation of children’s rights. Connecting dignity and children allows us to focus on the power adults exercise and not children’s dependency on adults when we discuss violence and exploitation o children.

Bringing Dignity to Children’s Rights Discussions

To help adults see the substance, importance and value of children’s dignity and its connection to children’s rights, I find it useful to have adults connect to their own childhood experiences.

They do this when they respond to some basic questions: For example,  I ask my students, “How many of you were children?” All say “Yes”! This is hard to deny. By just saying “yes”, adults start to see something  they share with the children with whom they interact: childhood.

Then I ask: “What is the longer period of your life, childhood or adulthood?” Initially, most say “adulthood”. However, as they start to think about the world from the perspective of their own childhood experiences, they realize that experiences of childhood stay with them and affect their entire lives. They conclude that childhood is really longer! Giving much value and power to childhood.

Dignity is linked to this childhood-centered perspective as adults explore dignity experiences from their own childhoods. I ask adults to describe a situation in their childhood where they felt an adult supported their human dignity and how it made them feel. They are also asked to describe a situation where an adult in their life violated their human dignity and how it made them feel? Such linkages to experiences with dignity connects them to behaviors and interactions from their own childhoods and to the childhoods of children with whom they interact.

Dignity is the great connector. Discussions of children’s rights should always be coupled with discussions of children’s dignity. Doing so will humanize our rights discussions and focus us on the behavioral experiences of rights. These experiences are rights are trying to ensure, and the violence and exploitation rights are trying to prevent.

Linking dignity and rights helps us all learn that all adult interactions with children connect multiple childhoods across generations: (1) the childhood of the adult that shapes their interactions with children; (2) the childhoods of the children with whom adults interact, and (3) the childhoods of tomorrow’s children with whom today’s children will interact when they become adults!!

Responding to questions about childhood experiences with dignity and related feelings, a student demonstrates how connecting rights and dignity build meaning and give substance to rights as lessons from childhood experiences are connected to how the person treats children in their life.

Many painful memories come from that time in my life when I think about dignity in my childhood.. I was often spanked with a switch, that I got to go pick out, or a paddle, by dorm parents for things I didn’t do. Because I was scared and confused, I retreated inward and found it hard to speak out – even to defend myself. Silence was tantamount to an admission of guilt. I would tell my mom about those times when we would speak by phone, but since that was such an infrequent occurrence; I would have often long buried the experiences deep in my mind as a way to escape them. Many never came out until later in my adult life. My most horrid memory of that time in my life was of being molested over a 2-year period by a man who was my piano teacher. When I was finally able to verbalize to my mother what had been going on, she quit her travelling advertising executive job, pulled me out of the school and moved us both back to the location where I live today. The memories of those beatings and molestation will never leave me, but they have in a way acted as the fuel that has driven me as a father in how I raise my children without violence.

When we adults connect to dignity through our own childhood experiences with dignity we see how rights become manifested in behavior and experience not just judged in law. This human dignity connection is what should be inseparable from our discussions of children’s rights, and indeed, all human rights.