TRAVELLING WITH CHILDREN IN STRASBOURG

Anyone who has travelled with children - or observed these journeys as a fellow passenger - is familiar with the challenges and frustration that travelling with children may involve. Parents do, nevertheless, take their children to places far from home, and most of the time they do so willingly, as experiences and memories springing from such trips enrich the lives of children and adults alike. Using this as metaphor, we wish to begin our contribution by noting that for a lawyer too, “travelling with children”, that is, going beyond national law with regard to children's legal rights, is both exhausting and rewarding. As the legal regulation concerning children is increasingly fragmented and internationalised, the applicable norms and principles are oft en found in transnational contexts, for instance in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. While drawing interpretative guidelines from the case law of the Strasbourg Court may sometimes be challenging, there is no denying that the Court plays a crucial role in taking the rights of the children seriously and developing child-centred approaches to legal argumentation.

In this chapter we will discuss one specific issue with regard to the Court's case law and the rights of the child, namely the possibility for the child to be exempted from certain lessons or school activities on grounds of freedom of religion. The issue can arise for example in conjunction with music lessons, dancing as a part of physical education, or sex education. While the content of the lessons for which exemption is sought can vary, the common feature is the conflict between state-mandated curricula and the convictions of the parents. The position of the child is less clear, and it is not clear how the best interests of the child could best be safeguarded in these cases.

The European Convention on Human Rights, like many other human rights conventions, stresses the role of the parents in bringing up children. The case law of the Court, however, supports the importance of state curricula. We argue that whichever side is emphasised, that of the parents or that of general society, more attention should be paid to the concrete circumstances of the child and the family as well as to the probable consequences for the child of allowing or denying the exemption.