Abstract

This paper examines the conceptual and linguistic categories of “child,” “adolescent” and the notion of “personal autonomy” as used in the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The U.N. language and that of children’s human rights advocates is compared to that employed by those academics and others who have deftly but inappropriately co-opted children’s rights language to argue that adolescents need not be protected from sex with adults in every circumstance. This, on the fallacious contention that adolescents can give voluntary, informed consent to certain such contact despite their powerless position in society. While such academics argue for what they term “sexual citizenship rights” for the adolescent; they have not advocated for adolescent democratic rights such as voting. Their rejection of the notion of adult-adolescent sex as a violation of the young person’s human rights in every instance is found to be based on the incorrect premise postulating a balance of power between adult and adolescent