The Right of Children to Know their Parents – a Constitutive Element of the Child’s Identity

Given that in the last century we have witnessed a substantial development of human rights and children’s rights implicitly, and given the progress of international and national regulations in this field, the present study is meant to add to the debate surrounding the right of children to know their parents as a constitutive element of their identity. During the writing of this study, we took into consideration the recent opinions in doctrine and the regulations in this field as well as the practical implications of this field of law. The analysis is not strictly focused on the law, but it has an interdisciplinary quality, combining several methods of research in order to highlight the role that the right of the child to know his/her past and that of his family in his formative year and the development of self-conscience. The importance of this study lies in the results of our research and in the new values attributed to the right of children to know their parents, as well as the arguments made concerning the controversial problem of discordance which may appear between the legal or apparent identity of the child and the real identity in case of adoption and artificial insemination.