Gaslighting in the CRC

Article 12 (1) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child reads:

States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.

This appears to be a powerful statement of Rights, except that it shoots itself in the foot with two clauses that invite adults to gaslight children who form inconvenient views:

1. the qualifier "who is capable of forming his or her own views". Who is deciding this capability? Not the child - by definition, a child who has a view will see themselves as capable of forming a view.
2. the opportunity to disregard the child's view based on their age and maturity

It was not until 2009 (20 years later!) that this was addressed in General Comment 12

20. States parties shall assure the right to be heard to every child “capable of forming his or her own views”. This phrase should not be seen as a limitation, but rather as an obligation for States parties to assess the capacity of the child to form an autonomous opinion to the greatest extent possible. This means that States parties cannot begin with the assumption that a child is incapable of expressing her or his own views. On the contrary, States parties should presume that a child has the capacity to form her or his own views and recognize that she or he has the right to express them; it is not up to the child to first prove her or his capacity.

29. By requiring that due weight be given in accordance with age and maturity, article 12 makes it clear that age alone cannot determine the significance of a child’s views. Children’s levels of understanding are not uniformly linked to their biological age. Research has shown that information, experience, environment, social and cultural expectations, and levels of support all contribute to the development of a child’s capacities to form a view. For this reason, the views of the child have to be assessed on a case-by-case examination.

30. Maturity refers to the ability to understand and assess the implications of a particular matter, and must therefore be considered when determining the individual capacity of a child. Maturity is difficult to define; in the context of article 12, it is the capacity of a child to express her or his views on issues in a reasonable and independent manner. The impact of the matter on the child must also be taken into consideration. The greater the impact of the outcome on the life of the child, the more relevant the appropriate assessment of the maturity of that child