Scientific conferences

In 1924, the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child addressed for the first time all the nations of the world to affirm the duty of States and individuals to systemic care for children. The Declaration set out 5 points covering aspects of: children‘s physical and mental health, safety, support, and the development and fulfillment of their talents and abilities. 100 years after the Declaration, the young scholars conference invites to explore the development and implementation of the law of children and childhood protection, everyday practices, issues and challenges from the perspective of social history with a focus on the 19th century. But already since the demographic revolution of the late 19th century, the view of the relation between families children and states had changed dramatically. Children were seen as a crucial element of the state‘s power, and their position in their families became a topic of public interest. These aspects have become of research interest lately. So, children‘s and childhood history has become a recent trend in historiography, combining family and social history. Nevertheless, Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea region seem to be under-researched in this respect.

The 100 years anniversary of the Declaration seems to be a great incentive for further research, we aim at taking an interdisciplinary and retrospective look at the theoretical and practical dynamics of these processes and the resulting development of children‘s rights policies in a comparative perspectivies in the Baltic Sea region, Eastern Europe and beyond.
Program

September 26
9:30-10:00 Welcome and coffee
First Session, Discussant: Heidi Hein Kircher
10:00-10:30 Mirjana Miškić (Serbia), Historical Development of Children’s Rights (online)
10:50-11:10 Kristina Gunne (Munich), The Child Tracing Services of the German Red Cross in the Federal Republic and the Geneva Declaration
11:10-11:30 Efrat Davidov (Israel), The Child’s Right to Respect and Radical Respect for the Present Moment: Study of Janusz Korczak’s Conception of Children’s Rights
11:30-12:30 Discussion

14:00-15:00 Keynote lecture I, Maren Röger (Lepzig), Children Born of War – A Never-Ending-Story of Rightlessness in the 20th Century
15:30-16:00 Discussion
Second Session, Discussant: Gintarė Malinauskaitė
16:20-16:40 Anastasija Smirnova (Riga), Expectations and Reality: The Development of the Law and the Attitude towards the Socially Cared Children in Latvia and Lithuania (1870s-1940)
16:40-17:00 Johann Nicolai (Germany), Rescuing Hope: The Kindertransport to England (1938-1939) and the Protection of Children’s Rights Amidst the Shadows of the Holocaust
17:00-17:20 Aisling Shalvey (Vienna), ‘…Only allowed to care for children of hereditary biological value:’ Medical and Racialised Constructions of Children’s Citizenship Rights in the Nazi State
17:20-18:00 Discussion

September 27
9:00-10:00 Keynote lecture II, Friederike Kind-Kovacs (Dresden), From 1924 to 2024: 100 Years of Children’s Rights in the Face of War
10:00-10:30 Discussion
Third Session, Discussant: David Feest
10:50-11:10 Yaara Shilo (Jerusalem), Am I Right? Exploring Children Right to Education following the Israeli Early Childhood Education Reform?
11:10-11:30 Ruth Pope (Hamburg), Feminist Activism Against Child Sexual Abuse Between Self Help, Counseling and Politics in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1980-2000
11:30-12:10 Discussion
12:10-14:00 Final discussion

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Wissenschaftlicher Ansprechpartner:
Heidi Hein-Kircher
heidi.hein-kircher@herder-institut.de

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Originalpublikation:
https://www.herder-institut.de/event/conference-historical-perspective-on-childhood-children-and-their-rights/