Summary: Negotiating the Sacred: Chandran Kukathas <strong>Do children have interests?</strong> Chandran Kukathas It is widely held that children have interests that deserve protection, by the law, by the state, and by international conventions. But before we can consider the merits of different measures to protect children it is important to ask whether or not children do indeed have interests and, if they do, what these might be. In this paper I suggest that children do not have interests and therefore that, whatever protections they require must have some other basis than that of attending to their interests. I also suggest that they have many fewer claims to protection than is sometimes asserted. <em>Biographical note</em> Chandran Kukathas is Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. He previously taught at the University of Utah, and was also for many years taught political theory at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is the author of <em>Hayek and Modern Liberalism</em> (OUP 1989) and <em>The Liberal Archipelago: A Theory of Diversity and Freedom</em> (OUP 2003). He has also published widely on such topics as multiculturalism, immigration, freedom, equality, and global justice.
