The longstanding debate in refugee law about the meaning of persecution has been largely resolved in favour of the human rights approach – the idea that basic human rights serve as an objective yardstick for evaluating whether a particular act might constitute persecution. However, the human rights approach produces several dilemmas, not least the question of which human rights are ‘basic’ human rights, and how to ascertain whether a given human rights violation reaches the threshold for persecution. These dilemmas have spawned various, sometimes competing, theories within refugee law scholarship. Meanwhile, a distinctive strain of child rights scholarship has emerged within refugee law, concerned with how to adapt the status determination procedure and refugee definition to children. Building upon that work, this article systematically examines the implications of the general human rights approach to persecution, and its various dilemmas, for the development of a child rights approach. The central thesis is that the human rights approach to persecution erects hidden barriers to the acceptance that violations of child rights (also) constitute persecution. Part 2 makes some preliminary observations on children’s rights that serve as a backdrop to exploring and critiquing, in part 3, the key features of the human rights approach to persecution and its implications for the rights of the child. Part 4 is a case study, based on the text of the European Union Qualification Directive and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, of how the child rights implications identified in part 3 play out ‘in the real world’. It is found that when the human rights approach, based on lex generalis, is superimposed on the lex specialis that is the rights of the child, the results are disappointing. Nonetheless, the article identifies how the human rights approach to persecution can be adjusted so as to accommodate the rights of the child.

中文翻译：

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“迫害”的人权方法及其对儿童权利的不满

难民法中关于迫害含义的长期争论已在很大程度上得到解决，支持人权方法——基本人权作为评估特定行为是否可能构成迫害的客观标准。然而，人权方法产生了几个困境，尤其是哪些人权是“基本”人权的问题，以及如何确定特定的侵犯人权行为是否达到了迫害的门槛。这些困境催生了难民法学术中的各种，有时是相互竞争的理论。与此同时，难民法中出现了一种独特的儿童权利学术研究，关注如何使身份确定程序和难民定义适应儿童。在这项工作的基础上，本文系统地研究了一般人权方法对迫害的影响，及其各种困境，对发展儿童权利方法的影响。中心论点是，对迫害的人权方法为接受侵犯儿童权利（也）构成迫害的观点设置了隐藏的障碍。第 2 部分对儿童权利提出了一些初步意见，作为在第 3 部分探索和批评迫害的人权方法的主要特征及其对儿童权利的影响的背景。第 4 部分是一个案例研究，基于欧盟资格指令的文本和欧盟法院的判例法，关于第 3 部分中确定的儿童权利影响如何“在现实世界中”发挥作用。研究发现，当基于一般法的人权方法叠加在儿童权利的特别法之上时，结果令人失望。尽管如此，该文章确定了如何调整对迫害的人权方法，以适应儿童的权利。