Research project The Rights of Children in Biomedicine: Human Rights and National Legal Orders Across Europe
Book project at the intersection of child law, medical law, and bioethics, with the aim of publishing an anthology on children’s rights in the biomedical field in Europe.
Photo: Krisana Antharith / Mostphotos
This edited volume examines how children's rights are protected in biomedical contexts across European national legal orders. Using international human rights standards, particularly the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as an analytical framework, the book assesses how national law governs informed consent, medical decision-making, and biomedical interventions involving children, treating the child as an independent rights-holder. It combines children's rights theory with in-depth national legal studies and comparative reflections. Published with Brill/Nijhoff.
Recent decades of advances in biomedicine have fundamentally transformed the conditions for children's health and survival. Developments in diagnostics, treatment, and preventive care have contributed to improved health and quality of life for children, while at the same time introducing new forms of uncertainty and risk – particularly in paediatric contexts where scientific knowledge is still evolving and decisions must be made under conditions of medical indeterminacy.
As patients, children occupy a particularly complex position. They are not only affected by illness or injury, but also dependent on parents or guardians who are required to make high-stakes decisions on their behalf, as well as on healthcare professionals and the organisation of healthcare systems. It is in this everyday setting – across hospital wards, diagnostic centres, and specialist clinics – that the legal status of children in biomedicine becomes both visible and fragile, and where the need for clear and robust legal frameworks becomes most apparent.
This book project has its origins in the research project Decision-making for Children in a State of Medical Indeterminacy, funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR, grant no. 2017-02992), which examined how biomedical decision-making under conditions of uncertainty affects children's rights and how legal systems respond to these challenges. Its overarching aim is to examine how children's rights in biomedicine are shaped within national legal orders across Europe, and how these systems interpret, implement, and operationalise the obligations that follow from international law.
Editors: Kavot Zillén (SU), Santa Slokenberga (UU)
Research Coordinator and Managing Editor: Danniz Sabo (SU)
Forthcoming publication: The Rights of Children in Biomedicine: Human Rights and National Legal Orders Across Europe.