Adolescents' approach toward children rights: Comparison between Jewish and Palestinian children from Israel and the Palestinian Authority

With the universal ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child societies have recognized children as human beings entitled to their own rights. This recognition calls for a thorough investigation of children's understanding of the concept of children rights at large and their own rights in particular. It further calls for an examination of the role of context in the formation of the concept of children's rights. The study reported here, examined adolescents' approach to children rights among three ethnic and national groups: Jewish adolescents, Palestinian adolescents from Israel (PI) and Palestinian adolescents from the Palestinian Authority (PA). The results indicated that for most of the items Jewish adolescents have higher agreements with children rights than PI and PA adolescents that were similar to each other in their acceptance of most aspects of children rights. However, this trend was not consistent over all types of children rights examined in the study. For instance, PA adolescents were more similar to Jewish adolescents than to PI adolescents in supporting the idea of children rights. Also, the three groups were similar in their low agreement with the idea of giving children rights in governmental matters. The paper discusses several interpretations and assumptions to explain these findings, such as the statehood conditions of Israel and the Palestinian Authority and cultural values of each group. Recommendations for future research are discussed.