Collective Rights and Children's Community Power

While Sor Juana struggled largely as an individual, her writings spoke to collective conditions of women and colonized peoples. Children's rights frameworks often emphasize individual protections (right to education, right to safety) while neglecting collective dimensions. Yet children organize together, build cultures together, and face systemic oppression as groups. Collective children's rights include: the right to form associations and organizations, the right to participate in community decisions affecting them, the right to cultural preservation for children in marginalized communities, and the right to collective self-determination. This recognizes children not merely as individuals needing protection but as communities with power and agency. Youth-led movements for climate justice, racial justice, and gun control demonstrate children's capacity for collective political action. Children's rights advocacy must support children building power together across differences. This includes creating conditions for children to identify shared interests, develop leadership among themselves, and demand systemic change. It requires adults to move beyond consulting children to genuinely sharing power with child-led organizations. Sor Juana's work, while authored individually, contributed to collective consciousness about women's intellectual rights. Similarly, supporting children's collective power means recognizing that lasting justice emerges when children themselves organize for it, not when adults grant rights from above. Children deserve spaces, resources, and protection to build movements for their own liberation.