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In the Nordic countries children’s rights generally hold a particularly high normative status. All Nordic countries except for Denmark have incorporated the key human rights treaty on children, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (the crc), into the domestic legal order, giving the crc status as domestic law. Drawing on wider literature to define a key set of “expectations on incorporation”, the article analyses the extent to which incorporation of the crc in the domestic legal order of four out of five Nordic countries has had an impact on legal developments in the Nordics in the wake of the 2015 “refugee crisis”. It is suggested that in asylum law, where the risk of a conflict of interest between the individual and the State in many ways is obvious, there seems to be significant room for improvement when it comes to the actual impact of the crc.

The crc as an instrument calls attention to children as a group. Yet paradoxically it has not resulted in explicit consideration of discrimination against children on the basis of childhood (i.e. detrimental treatment for being young/under 18) in the same way that has happened for other groups like women and ethnic minorities in instruments drafted specifically for their rights. Children are more likely to suffer poverty and violence than adults, and under-18s are largely excluded from national legislation prohibiting unfair discrimination. In this article the jurisprudence of the Committee on the Rights of the Child is examined and it is established that even though child-specific discriminatory practices such as corporal punishment are criticised by the Committee, they are seldom labelled ‘discrimination’ as such. The Committee reserves consideration of Article 2, which enshrines the principle of non-discrimination, for traditionally disadvantaged groups of children such as girls and ethnic minorities. It is concluded that Article 2 has great potential for drawing attention to detrimental treatment for being young/under 18, but that the phenomenon must be more explicitly referenced with greater frequency in law, practice, and scholarship.

Incorporation is amongst the legislative measures of implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) recommended by the Committee on the Rights of the Child. This article will discuss incorporation of the CRC in national law. It will show how incorporation is understood in different contexts, and highlight possible tensions between child rights and international law discourse and analysis. It begins by reviewing literature on incorporation of human rights treaties before discussing how incorporation is conceptualised in the context of the CRC. The focus then shifts to a review of studies that provide insights into how incorporation and legal integration of the CRC impact on how children's rights are treated in national legal systems. While primarily a commentary on the available literature, the authors reflect on the significance of incorporation and how this is understood for academic and legal analysis, and what the evidence tells us about its contribution to the realisation of children's rights.

Syftet med 2016 års tillfälliga lag om uppehållstillstånd är att inskränka möjligheterna till uppehållstillstånd utan att riskera en tillämpning av skyddsbestämmelser och regler om anhöriginvandring som strider mot Sveriges internationella förpliktelser. För att uppnå detta används svenska konventionsåtaganden som ”ventiler” i vissa av lagens centrala bestämmelser. Lagstiftaren har emellertid inte klargjort vilka internationella förpliktelser som avses. Tolkningen av detta har istället lämnats över till rättstillämparen, vilket väckt frågor både rörande rättstillämpningen i sig och om ansvarsfördelning när det gäller rättsbildningen. I den här artikeln diskuteras begreppet ”svenskt konventionsåtagande” i den tillfälliga lagen och vilka konsekvenser detta sätt att lagstifta kan få.

Article 4 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that state parties have a positive obligation to implement the necessary legal measures to secure the rights recognised in the Convention. The CRC Committee has stated that incorporation is its preferred method of implementation. In Sweden, the issue of incorporation has been the subject of a lengthy and contentious debate. This article aims to unpack the reasons for this. It is suggested that technical-legal arguments against the incorporation of the CRC are grounded in and intertwined with cultural-legal arguments. While these arguments may be more or less clearly expressed by the various parties in the Swedish debate, I argue that they seem to have played an important role in the process through which this international treaty has been made applicable on the domestic level in Sweden.