An international collaboration between children's rights researchers has resulted in a newly published anthology on children's vulnerability viewed in a legal context. Leader of the research group for Child Law Professor Trude Haugli and Associate Professor Mona Martnes from the Faculty of Law at UiT have led the book project as editors.
News archive
21.02.2025:
New Book on Children's Vulnerability
New Book on Children's Vulnerability
An international collaboration between children's rights researchers has resulted in a newly published anthology on children's vulnerability viewed in a legal context. Leader of the research group for Child Law Professor Trude Haugli and Associate Professor Mona Martnes from the Faculty of Law at UiT have led the book project as editors.
The anthology has an overarching scientific focus on the concept of vulnerability as understood from a Northwestern European perspective. There has already been done some research on vulnerability in relation to childhood and children's rights, but the contributors to the book identified a gap in the research on vulnerability within a legal context. In this book, they explore more deeply what vulnerability entails, from primarily legal perspectives.
Trude and Mona have answered some questions about the book and the collaborative and editorial work that was done prior to the book’s launch.
Why did you choose to focus on the concept of vulnerability within children's rights perspectives?
Vulnerability is a very exciting concept that is often taken for granted. Vulnerability is used in various ways, and sometimes to mask other arguments or contribute to stigmatisation. At the same time, vulnerability is an important justification for special rights for certain groups, such as children. It is therefore important to analyse the concept in a children's rights context.
The book is a product of a conference organised by the Children's Rights Research Group in 2022. Can you elaborate on how the book as a collaborative project took shape, from idea to execution?
The Children's Rights Group at the Faculty of Law (UiT) was awarded significant funding in 2020 from the Research Council of Norway for a four-year project on children's right to attain the highest standard of health, which is usually referred to as children's right to health. The overarching goal of the project was to contribute to improving and securing children's rights in health matters, by balancing children's right to participation and the right to protection, and balancing parents' rights and duties and children's rights against the state's responsibilities. Nationally, children's rights have largely been understood and approached from a practical basis, which there has been a great need for. However, we believed that it was time to try to develop a theoretical model for understanding children's right to health within a Nordic welfare state perspective.
After identifying some theories that we found relevant, we decided to work with vulnerability theories, based on Martha Fineman's understanding of this phenomenon. The new approach we took was to try to link the theory to an understanding of children's rights. We invited key children's rights researchers to the conference titled "Rethinking Vulnerability from a Children’s Rights Perspective".
Even before the conference, we had received drafts from the participants, and we had presented the idea to the publishing house Universitetsforlaget and received a preliminary green light from them to go ahead with the book.
The texts turned out to fit well together, and after many rounds of reading each other's texts, anonymous peer reviews, improvements based on feedback, and so on, the final version of the book was ready. The editorial work naturally involved reading texts, keeping track of progress, coordinating processes, and not least, having a consistent red thread through the introduction and the concluding chapter.
.jpg "Christian_Halvorsen-Mona_Martnes_-20210317-2 (1).jpg")
What do you hope the book will contribute to?
Further discussions on the use of the concept of vulnerability in children's rights. Perhaps it can also inspire looking at other fundamental premises for legal discussions within this area of law, so that we can continue to develop children's rights.
Through the book process, we have also become even more acquainted with prominent children's rights researchers and have strengthened our international network. By writing the book in English, we have the opportunity to reach out to international research communities, participate in debates internationally, and thereby make our research group even more visible.
Lenke til nyhet
06.06.2024:
Unraveling Family Legality with Ida
Analyzing the protection of Children's right to family life.
08.04.2024:
“The Convention on the Rights of the Child has given us a common language”
This March, the research group on child law at UiT - Faculty of Law were lucky to welcome Professor Conor O'Mahony, from University College Cork in Ireland as a guest researcher.
18.01.2023:
Exciting position as a PhD fellow in legal sciences on Sami children's right to a future within their own culture!
The position is affiliated with the research school Changing Arctic.
12.11.2022:
Vacant postition as Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Child Law Research group!
The postdoctoral position is connected to, but not part of the project Children’s Right to Health (ChildRight) funded by the Norwegian Research Council.
27.07.2022:
From the 13th until 16th of june the conference "Rethinking vulnerability theory within a children’s rights approach" was held in Tromsø.
The UiT research group on Child Law were the hosts of the conference.
From the 13th until 16th of june the conference "Rethinking vulnerability theory within a children’s rights approach" was held in Tromsø.
The UiT research group on Child Law were the hosts of the conference.
Great keynote speeches were given by Professor Ton Liefaard, Leiden, Professor Ursula Kilkelly, Cork, Professor Jonathan Herring, Oxford, Professor Laura Lundy, Belfast and Professor Daniel Stoecklin, Geneva. Other participants from different parts of Europe, in addition to members from our own research group, gave great presentations as well, and everyone participated in interesting and important discussions. In the evenings we were able to explore and enjoy both fjords and mountains, and even the midnight sun joined us.Lenke til nyhet
29.09.2021:
Research group meeting at Sommarøya
September 28th the research group in Child Law met at Sommarøya to work on an exciting two year plan for research on child law!
Research group meeting at Sommarøya
September 28th the research group in Child Law met at Sommarøya to work on an exciting two year plan for research on child law!
Lenke til nyhet