The Rights 0f Children to Benefit from Social Security in International Regulations

Abstract

In the past century, especially after the experience of global armed conflicts, man appeared in the foreground as a creature of inherent and inalienable dignity, who is to be both respected and protected. International normative acts concerning human rights have arisen, referring to the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human race, including the youngest – children. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Children through international agreements such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the special care given to children is emphasized. International legal acts include in their content the so‑called second generation of human rights, including social rights. These acts claim the right to social security, that is, the state’s protection in situations of loss of subsistence and the inability to meet the basic needs of children. The first international documents on children particularly emphasized the right of the child to care and protection, placing them more as a matter of legal protection than as the subject of those rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, for the first time, repeatedly stated that states only guarantee and secure the implementation of the rights that a child holds as a subject of rights. The analysis of individual regulations indicates that international obligations now underline the legal subordination of the youngest members of society to force states to provide them with an adequate level of existence, as they form a group that is not entitled to claim their own rights. References in international documents to the financial situation of the people responsible for the child, to the financial capacity of the country, or the possibility of granting certain benefits to the people responsible for the child, are merely expressions of the principle of subsidiarity and the limited scope for legal action by the children themselves without diminishing their autonomy.