Research project Treated Like a Child: Children and Age Discrimination Law in Sweden and the UK

The principle of non-discrimination is a key feature of human rights law at both the national and international level. Indeed, the principle of non-discrimination constitutes one of the four general principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). It is accepted that children may experience unfair discrimination as a member of a racial or ethnic minority, or because of their gender. We, however, argue that it has mainly been ignored that children experience such discrimination because they are children. There are several fields in which direct and indirect discrimination against children due to age is accepted with few if any objections. Examples include children's limited opportunities to influence political decisions, children being banned from public spaces, that corporal punishment of children remains to be accepted in many countries, and the treatment of migrant children. 

In this research project relevant equality and discrimination legislation will be analysed from a child rights perspective. We argue that children are routinely excluded from legislation in different fields of law, not as a result of careful analysis but instead based on unfounded assumptions about children as a group. Two case studies, Sweden and the UK, will be used to show different approaches to children and equality. We hold that age discrimination against children is a little understood phenomenon and that it is not sufficiently acknowledged or researched. We argue that childhood should be explicitly and commonly accepted as a distinct category for discrimination in order to make it more likely that real improvements for children as equals can be secured.