Children’s right to development: how should we interpret ‘fullest potential’?
Gerry Redmond
Social Policy Research Centre
Contact Email: g.redmond
unsw.edu.au
The Convention on the Rights of the Child states that “States Parties agree that the education of the child shall be directed to the development of the child's personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential.” Although the term ‘fullest potential’ has been widely used, there has been little discussion of how it can be interpreted, or of its implications for the realisation of children’s rights. My purpose in this article is to offer one interpretation of the meaning of ‘fullest potential’. I propose that while legal conceptualizations of human rights, currently dominant in the human rights discourse, cannot easily accommodate aspirational notions such as ‘fullest potential’, ethical conceptualisations of human rights offered by Thomas Pogge and Amartya Sen can accommodate the aspirations embodied in this term. I also propose that ‘fullest potential’ can be used as a practical motivator for policies to reduce inequities in outcomes among children. Discussion of the term however also brings to the fore a number of issues that remain unresolved in wider human rights debates, such as how priorities for children’s education should be socially agreed, debated and adapted over time, and prioritisation of use of scarce resources for the realisation of human rights.
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