“But the Emperor has nothing at all on!

Despotism and Children’s’ Rights in Question

by Caius Brandão &

Marcos Paulo de Melo Ramos

A long time ago, Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), in his tale “The

Emperor’s New Clothes,” told us that a child was the only one capable of announcing the

absurdity of the vain Emperor’s nudity. The emperor believed to be wearing a suit of magic

clothes that was visible only to persons of intelligence. While the adults concealed

themselves behind established norms and conventions in fear of being exposed, Andersen’s

child did not hesitate in making herself socially present through the annunciation of what

seemed to her intriguing or funny perhaps. The Danish author puts the following words in

the mouth of the transgressing child’s father: “Listen to the voice of innocence!”

Despite the father’s naïve but intrepid suggestion in Andersen’s tale, it seems to

us that nowadays children’s opinions are not taken seriously by adults yet. This article seeks

to raise some pending issues about the conception of childhood at our present time. The

questions guiding our investigation are:

• Why should adults listen to the voices of children? Many times, children are morally

and legally seen as “property” of their parents.

• Can this idea of adults “owning” children place the child’s life and optimal

development at harm’s way?

 • To what extent and through what means must the cultural practices which harm the

United Nation’s Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) be avoided? (For more

information, see Brandao, 2007).

We are well aware that such questions, in order to be answered, demand much

more space than we have here. So we assume that by simply raising them, we will take our

first step toward their resolutions, which, as we will see later, cannot be offered by one or two

inspired and well-intending writers. Instead, they ought to surface through a social endeavor

grounded in dialogue and the articulation in the areas of human rights, cultural critique, and

philosophical engagement.

The Foundations and Origins of Children’s Rights

Why do we accept it to be morally wrong to commit an act of violence against a

child? On what grounds do we say that she has the right to a life free of violence? We may

assume that the foundations of children’s rights are intrinsically related to the foundations of

human rights – here understood as a system of moral values which puts forth individual and

collective rights and duties. Hopefully, the understanding of how these values are

constructed and deconstructed throughout our history will help us better understand and

respect the rights of children.

Noberto Bobbio, professor of political philosophy looks back in history and

clearly sees three distinct paths humankind has chosen to ground moral values (Bobbio,

2004).

Firstly, if such values were inherent to human nature they would certainly have an

unquestionable, unchangeable, and absolute foundation. However, different interpretations

of the so-called ‘human nature’ would actually result in distinct sets of values, often mutually

opposing. Let us take as an example two possible interpretations of women’s nature. Not so
long ago, women were considered to be naturally incapable of reaching intellectual maturity

and, therefore, with no natural means to take active participation in public life. This

conception of women’s nature has gradually been changing, allowing them not only the right

to vote, but also to take positions of utmost importance in the international political scenario.

So, if the wisdom of right and wrong has not been written on the human heart by

nature, as natural law thinkers would claim, would they be “self-evident truths”? But

Bobbio also rejects this possibility on the basis of the same incongruity of substantiating

values on subjective definitions of reality. As an example, he mentions that the 1789 French

Declaration considered sacred and inviolable the right to property, while nowadays "all

references to property as a human right have disappeared from the United Nations’ more

recent documents" (Bobbio, 2004).

At last, Bobbio presents a more objective and evidence-based approach to

understand the foundations of our moral values, according to which the grounds of our moral

values derive from their very general acceptance at a given historical moment. In other

words, far from being absolute and immutable, moral values are established by the consensus

among those who constitute them as such. Exactly for this reason, Bobbio considers the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights the "greatest historical proof" of the human capacity

to weave a consensus about a system of universal values. In short, human rights are historical

rights. They arise from the adhesion to a specific set of values highly influenced by social,

political, technological, and economic transformations.

In 1989 the CRC comes about within a political and ideological scenario that

lends the child the value of a full human being. Bobbio wisely understands that the issue of

human rights’ foundation has been settled by the UN Universal Declaration, and that our

current greatest challenge is its tutelage. That is exactly why the problem of violence against
children must be dealt with not only in the theoretical field, but also with concrete and urgent

actions.

Flesh of My Flesh Or Are You Your Own Flesh?

The philosophy of childhood is still a fairly incipient discipline. Notwithstanding,

since ancient times Western philosophy has taken upon itself the task of questioning,

justifying, and even proposing new values for adults’ individual and collective behavior and

attitudes towards children. Plato, for example, regarded children as the State’s responsibility,

and advocated that it should take full charge of the education of its future citizens. His

disciple Aristotle, on the other hand, was the first Greek philosopher to justify the paternal

domain over the child. For him, free adult men were born to govern, while slaves, women,

and children were born to obey. This conception of a paternal despotic power, supposedly of

natural origin, gave birth to what Elisabeth Badinter calls “Aristotle’s legacy” (Badinter,

1985).

Throughout the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church held a tight control

over the production of knowledge and even philosophical works. According to Badinter

(1985), during this time the Church protected the father’s despotic domain, justifying such

power in God’s will. Later, in the XVII century an internationally renowned philosopher,

John Locke, moved away from Aristotle’s philosophical theories to attribute nature brand

new “wills”:

• He says that every human being is born free, and that the paternal despotic power has

no grounds on natural law (Locke, 1690).

• He openly argues that the domain over the child must be shared by both mother and

father.
 • Locke, a faithful advocate for the ‘natural’ right to property, argues that the parents’

power over their children derives from their moral duty to care for and educate them

as commanded by God.

• Locke’s child – children are will-less and essentially incomplete as human beings –

seems to reflect a certain historical agreement for the definition of childhood. Despite

his criticism against the paternal despotic power, Lock’s adult-centered perception of

the child unveils how the devaluation of children by adults lays the moral foundations

that justify the despotic domain over them.

What we see in common in all sides from this philosophical debate about the

power of adults over children, be it in the hands of the State or the family, is a flagrant

attempt to find a moral justification for the right of “owning” children. But, perhaps, the

universal values which gave birth to this claim from adults are not self-evident truths, as the

metaphysicians would want, or determined by nature, as natural-law philosophers would

argue, or even by God’s will, as religion would claim. Currently, the most accepted position

is that moral values are founded on a specific historical consensus. For this reason, the

consensus that we question is the value of a human person. What is after all the value

assigned to those human beings over whom a despotic power is claimed? If we must see

slaves as soulless people or women as inferior beings to morally justify the claim to own

them, then, how shall we regard our children as to rightfully take them as our property?

If on the one hand, the vision of the will-less and voiceless child still serves to

restrain her under the adults’ despotic power, on the other hand, the CDC is the outcome of a

new general perception of childhood. Not only does this new child have a will, but she also

knows how to express it. At last but not least, a liberating vision, since it views the child as

an integral and developing human being who has got human rights just like any of us. By

bringing this new vision into practice in our daily lives, the CRC inaugurates the immorality
of any adult claiming the right to physically or psychologically harm the child, be it for

whatever purpose. It does not matter if the adult is from the family, the school, the church, or

the State; if the child is seen as a mere object of the adult’s despotic authority, then, she is

most certainly at risk of having her human rights violated.

Children’s Doings and Duties

The CRC’s new perspective no longer allows us to understand childhood in

lacking terms in relation to adulthood, like an unfinished people’s kingdom. We must

otherwise look at it as a constituting element of society to see it in its complexity through

interdisciplinary (perhaps transdisciplinary) lens. Scrutinizing movements that, more than

only translating, bring to life children’s voices which have been subsumed by representations

long entrenched in the adult-centered way of conceiving childhood. In order to avoid

misunderstandings, we must point out that this is not about “giving voice to the silenced

ones.” Children have always had a voice. This is about revising our paradigms (which

orchestrate our value systems and knowledge production) to overcome Andersen’s mistake:

“Listen to the voice of innocence.” It was not innocence speaking. It was childhood itself in

its doings and duties.

Although it is already a corroborated fact that such doings and duties have their

own prevailing systems of truth, it seems to us that the claim that children are like detached

“people” is an overstatement, to say the least. On the other hand, there is no overstatement in

recognizing the diverse nature of their experiences and their possibility to enrich ideas and

enlarge perspectives when, respecting and furthering their participation, we recognize their

place – while, in turn, children recognize ours – in the construction of this project called

society. A place not given beforehand, but rather dialogically weaved in human relationship,

since, as Gerison Lansdown (2003) puts it, “It is not appropriate to use age as universal proxy
for competence.” This is a significant change that leads to political and institutional

transformations. The emphasis, however, falls upon the individual person, despite the

grounds of generalizing abstractions. At the end of the day, the greatest transformation is up

to each individual adult in its daily duties who must let go of the historical power (meaning

the hand that injures the body or the word that limits the spirit). It is the adult who must

decolonize childhood from its despotic regime. Our choice is to reproduce despotism in our

children or build together new worlds with respect and dignity.

Translating Cultures and Mundializing Human Beings

Whereas the CRC takes away the moral grounds for adults’ personal and

collective absolutism over children, we question why in the discourses of Western

universalists children’s rights must be seen as a justification for despotism among societies.

Cultural relativists seem to draw arguments from the Christian teaching “Let him

who is without sin cast the first stone” to tie our hands and make us believe that cultures are

like great static kingdoms. However, it does not seem to offer satisfactory answers to the

problems regarding certain traditional practices which harm children’s fundamental rights.

For instance, every year thousands of young girls are at risk of suffering female genital

mutilation. Cultural relativists, however, would argue that no “outsider” has the right to

question this practice, often supported by the child’s family members, on the basis of the

right to cultural identity. On the other hand, when we go to other cultures and impose our

moral values on them and claim that their traditional practices are barbaric and that they must

avoid them at any cost, we lose more than a few myths, knowledge of ethnoscience, or

unique artistic productions. Most importantly, we lose their very means of socializing and

sensibilities, a unique way of being in the world that could indeed contribute to our own

Westernized culture, which, let us be honest, is doomed to unsustainability.

 What we would like to propose to our readers is the possibility of new

understandings about what culture actually is and how they allow us to overcome the

misleading debate between Western universalism against cultural relativism. These new

ways of conceiving the problem have been discussed and proposed by an array of authors

from different countries, such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Bruno Latour, Walter

Mignolo, and Eliesse Scaramal among others.

We must constantly ask ourselves to what extent can we teach “others” the path of

virtue without being ourselves committed to revise our own way of life. This conception

requires one’s own critique and transformation, but who is actually willing to do so? After

all, cultures do not dialogue, people do. Thus, we realize that the CRC and other human and

non-human rights de facto implementation depends on much more than on a mere “follow it.”

Unfortunately, our work is much harder than that. Despite all the urgency that today’s

children rightfully demand, the CRC full implementation depends on our individual and

collective ability to act with justice and grounded on a type of authority that must go beyond

universal, perhaps mundialized (Mignolo, 2000) – starting from a non-hegemonic

globalization process – when the word of order would be “translate it.” How do we do it?

First of all, according to Walter, in Spanish, Portuguese and French, there is a distinction

between “globalizacion” and “mundialization.” In his book, Coloniality, Subaltern

Knowledge, and Border Thinking (2000), Mignolo explains it like this: It rearticulates the

colonial differences in a new form of coloniality of power no longer located in one nation-

state or a group of nation-states, but as a transnational and trans-state global coloniality. And

how do we translate cultures? According to Boaventura de Sousa Santos:

The work of translation does not have the topoi (common places
which form the basic consensus and allow argumentative
dissension) beforehand because the only ones available are
genuine to one’s own wisdom or culture and, as such, are not
accepted as evident by another wisdom neither by another
culture. In other words, the topoi that each wisdom or practice
 brings to the contact zone will no longer be the premises of
argumentation, instead, they become the argument itself. As the
work of translation progresses, it builds the adequate topoi for
the contact zone and the translation situation. It is a demanding
work, with no insurance against risks and always on the verge of
collapsing. (Santos, 2004)

Only this translation process can secure peoples’ dignity and identities who,

otherwise, would need to hold on tightly to tradition – making culture seem static when in

fact it is so dynamic – with the intent of resisting the process of universalizing rights and

civility which, for the humanitarians’ astonishment, dehumanizes them before their own eyes

and on their own terms. We do agree with Isabelle Stengers when she writes:

Perhaps, someone will say that this is utopia, but the one who
protests this way has already been transformed. He or she must
deny a possible place where, before, it was thought to be of no
choice. Utopia can be a wisdom that counts. (Santos, 2004)

Maybe we are too optimistic, but as long as children keep on their doings and

duties we have good reasons for hope. Then, perhaps, we must indeed listen to the voice of

that little child who tells us that “the emperor has nothing at all on,” after all, we would most

certainly still be under the despotic power of that vain emperor if she had not warned us.

References

Badinter, E. (1985). Um amor conquistado: O mito do amor materno. Rio de Janeiro, RJ:
Nova Fronteira.

Bobbio, N. (2004). A era dos direitos. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Elsevier.

Brandao, C. (2007, May/June). Children have the right to have rights. Exchange.

Lansdown, G. (2003). Evolving capacities and participation. International Instiute for Child

Rights and Development. Prepared for The Canadian International Development

 Agency. Retrieved February 20, 2009 from

http://web.uvic/iicrd/graphics/CIDA%CAP%20Report%20%20-

%20Evolving%20capacity%20and %20Participation.12.03.pdf

Locke, J. (1690). Second treatise on government. Public Domain, posted to Wiretap, July

1, 1994, Retrieved February 15, 2009 from

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locks/locke2/locke2nd-a.html#Sect.51

Mignolo, G. (2000). Local histories/Global designs: Coloniality, subaltern knowledge, and

border thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Santos, B. (2004). Con hecimento prudente para uma vida decente: Um discurso sobre as

ciencias revisitado. Sao Paulo, SP: Cortex.

Additional Resources

Books:

Latour, B., (1994). “Jamais fomos modernos: ensaio de antropologia simétrica.” Rio de

Janeiro, RJ: 34.

Scaramal, E., (2006). “Haiti: fenomenologia de uma barbárie.” Goiânia, GO: Cânone.

Online Articles:

Sirota, R., “Emergência de uma Sociologia da Infância: Evolução do Objeto e do Olhar.”

Retrieved February 15 2009 from http://www.scielo.br/pdf/cp/n112/16099.pdf

Article: Sociologia da Infância: Balanço dos Trabalhos em Língua Inglesa, MONTADON,

Cléopâtre. http://www.scielo.br/pdf/cp/n112/16100.pdf
Authors Short Bios

Caius Brandão is an advocate for children’s rights. He is currently working as a consultant

on children’s rights in his Brazilian hometown, Goiânia, where he also studies philosophy at
the Federal University of Goiás. In 2005, Caius became a fellow of the Global Leaders
Program for Young Children. From 2003 to 2006, he coordinated the Instituto Promundo’s
Participation and Human Development Program that works to promote children’s rights in
developing countries. Caius has also worked for the National Movement of Street Boys and
Girls as a volunteer youth group facilitator. In 1991, he moved to the U.S. and in 1993 started
the Brazil Project of the International Child Resource Institute (ICRI), in Berkeley, CA.
Under ICRI's umbrella, Caius helped design and implement a pilot program for San
Francisco street youth, Rising Youth for Social Equity.
Born in 1984, Marcos Paulo de Melo Ramos is a Brazilian researcher from the Center for
African and American Interdisciplinary Studies at the Goias State University. He is currently
preparing his graduation thesis on identities, religions, and migration cultures at the Federal
University of Goias. Marcos Paulo has a college degree in History from the Goias State
University.