How does an idea that forms in the minds of a few activists in one part of the world become a global norm that nearly all states obey? How do human rights ideas spread? In this book, Robyn Linde tracks the diffusion of a single human rights norm: the abolition of the death penalty for child offenders under the age of 18. The norm against the penalty diffused internationally through law--specifically, criminal law addressing child offenders, usually those convicted of murder or rap...

Though children have never been absent from international studies discourse, they are too often reduced to a few simplistic and unidimensional framings. This book seeks to recover children’s agency and to recognize the complex variety of childhoods and the global issues that affect them. Written by an international list of contributors from Europe, Africa, North America, and Australasia, chapters present highly nuanced accounts of children and childhoods across global political time and sp...