`According to the UNICEF link, a "child" is anyone up to the age of 18. It isn't surprising that a treaty that can not distinguish between a mentally impaired 6 year old that suffocates an infant and a 17 year old rapist and cold blooded killer is not quickily ratified by the US, a country fixated on teen-violence.'' Matt Cramer
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The point isn't that Billy Joel needed killing.
The convention is intended to apply broad advocacy and prohibition principles to laws and policies of states. So, then the arena of discourse is designed to frame the nature of state power and its relationship to its citizens and other members under its control. It is not intended to directly adjudicate individual cases.
In this context, then the age of majority or gaining adult status is required for the state to exercise its most extreme measures such as execution and life imprisonment. The rational is that adults have in principle the right to vote, to organize politically, to advocate, to become members of government and otherwise have legal and institutional access to determining the nature and scope of state power over them. In principle, those people who have not attained majority are institutionally barred from active political life and therefore have no access to determining the nature of state power over them. They are fundamentally dependent. The reason for prohibiting their execution or life imprisonment is the fundamental absence of any state institutional means to determine the actions and powers over them.
This convention on the Rights of the Child works in conjunction with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For example, people in a dependent status, as refugees, exiles, stateless persons, including prisoners of war, who are obviously barred from any access to formal, institutional and political means to the state power over them are also protected from the state's extreme measures such as summary execution, permanent detention, in very similar fashion.
The intended effect is too remove the absolute power of life and death from states, over people who have absolutely no legal, formal or institutional means or standing to defend, advocate or organize themselves against such powers.
Chuck Grimes