A Comparative Study on UN Convention on the Rights of the Children and the Korean Child Welfare Law

아동권리에 관한 국제협약과 국내 아동복지법 비교

The purpose of this study is to monitor the implementation of UN Convention on the Rights of the Children (CRC) and to find out new directions for the promotion on the children's rights in Korea. Based on the module of International Save the Children Alliance (1993) about the children's rights and the Indicators of Korean Children's Wellbeing (Korean Council for Children's Rights, 1999), the revised Korean child welfare law (2000) as a related domestic law has compared with the 54 articles of CRC (1989). The results of this study are analyzed as follows: The Korean child welfare law has only 2 articles on the civil and political rights of the children in special need and neglects the economic, social and cultural rights of the general children at home. In consequence the Korean law has few survival rights of the general children for securing their adequate living standards and supplementing their parents' role. And it limits only to the development rights of the children in special need, therefore, it neglects the genera: children's rights to information, play and leisure, cultural activities. Above all, it has only 2 articles on the participation rights of the children in special circumstances. On the other hand, based on the indicators of Korean Children's Wellbeing, the collected data say that the budget for the child welfare is only 1.12% of the total budget of the ministry of the health and welfare and its 96.28% is for the children in substitutional care. Based on the results, implications for practice and future research are discussed, and new directions for the promotion of the children's rights are also suggested.