2 - From the National to the International: The Makings of the Global Discourse of Children’s Rights

Summary

Introduction

While many of the developments around conceptualizations of childhood and constructions of children's rights were taking place around a similar time across societies in Western Europe and the Americas, they remained distinctly national discourses and movements in these regions. It was not until the end of the First World War that these disparate and distinct discourses and efforts about children's rights started to take a more international form, or, at least, a European regional form. This internationalization of this discourse has largely been attributed to Eglantyne Jebb, who is credited with being the founder of the Save the Children movement1 and who after the First World War became concerned about the welfare of children in the countries that had lost the war, notably Austria and Germany, due to her belief that ‘they could hardly be blamed for the war and therefore should not suffer as a consequence of defeat’ (Cunningham, 2013: 371). In her attempt to achieve her objectives, Jebb is said to have established Save the Children in London in 1919 in order to send food to children affected by the blockade against Germany and Austria following the war.

Once the immediate crisis facing children (and indeed, adults in their families) in these countries had abated, Jebb started to realize that there existed a range of other difficult situations, again, mainly in Europe, from which children needed to be saved. This regional focus needs to be situated against a backdrop of the rise in internationalism in public discourses at the time which has been well outlined by Baughan:

The Save the Children Fund (S.C.F.) had been formed in 1919 to provide food for child victims of the post- war blockades in Austria and Germany. It claimed to be Britain's first ‘truly international charity,’ and by the mid- nineteen- twenties was at work in twenty- four countries throughout Europe and the Near East, and gave relief to children ‘regardless of nationality, religion, and the political views of their parents.’ The international focus of the S.C.F. mirrored a wider shift in the popular imagined geographies of inter- war Britain. Wartime travel, communication and news reports had increased public knowledge of places and peoples in Europe.