The Significance of Different Approaches to Human Rights Monitoring: A Case Study of Child Rights

Due to the lacunae between legal obligations to human rights and the actual situation, monitoring is an essential component of the international and national human rights system as it illuminates the situation of human rights commitments and ensures the relevancy of instruments. But how is monitoring carried out? The article explores monitoring in relation to the rights of the child and presents analysis about how actors interpret and execute monitoring and the significance of different approaches. Due to actors' different considerations of child rights in the process, an essential distinction is made between two approaches to monitoring, which are defined as 'linear' and 'circular'. The influence of these approaches upon monitoring is discussed in relation to: the untangling of rights; tool use; and limiting the process. The paper demonstrates that monitoring is complex with numerous issues and significant choices to be made that determine the value of various contributions. In sum, identifying these approaches assists critical analysis of the results.