A South African perspective on children's rights: general principles.

South Africa has made rapid progress in the field of human and especially children's rights. This is in sharp contrast with it's apartheid history where even the basic principles of human rights were negated. In this article an overview will be given of the general principles on which the realization of children's rights in South Africa are based. More specifically information on the population, economic status, political climate and recent developments in this field is presented. This is followed by a discussion on the social-economic nature of children's rights, the courts as enforcement mechanisms, and the contents of the best interest standard as described both in convention on the rights of the child and the South African Constitution.