Vulnerability and the Best Interests of the Child in Tobacco Control

Abstract

Abstract The vulnerability of individuals is often used as a springboard to call upon additional rights protection or to scale up interventions. This is also the case in child health and tobacco control research. While human rights law is generally a strong mechanism to support such calls, critics like Martha Fineman question specific understandings of vulnerability within human rights law. Against this backdrop, the article analyses the usefulness of relying on vulnerability in human rights law to argue for better rights protection. The article concludes that Article 3 crc – reflecting the best interests of the child norm – seems a suitable “solution” to Fineman’s critique on the notion of vulnerability in human rights law. Finally, the universal and particular vulnerabilities of children in relation to tobacco-related harm can be a springboard into rights protection but are not the principle legal source that require governments to break down structural health inequalities.