GLOBAL: Children’s rights not yet a reality

Photo: Said Afrah Hagai/IRIN

Realizing children's rights is harder in some contexts than others - children in Somalia (file photo)

DAKAR, 20 November 2009 (IRIN) - Children’s rights advocates are taking 20 November, the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to highlight legal advances, but say when it comes to education, healthcare and protection in conflicts and natural disasters, children are often the first to be deprived of their rights.

“The Convention has revolutionized the way children are viewed in our societies,” said Susanna Vilaran with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in a 20 November communiqué. “In many countries…governments, individuals and most importantly children, know [children] should be treated with respect.”

The CRC is the most widely ratified human rights treaty.

Legal instruments introduced as a result of the CRC include the 2005 UN Security Council Resolution 1612, which established a mechanism to track six violations of children’s rights in conflict, including rape, abduction, killing and maiming, and recruitment into armed forces.

The CRC also triggered regional child rights acts and policies, including the 1999 African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the European Commission’s launch of a child rights strategy. 

“The CRC has encouraged politicians to listen to children’s views and pushed their rights up the political agenda,” said Save the Children’s child rights adviser and advocate Jennifer Grant.

She pointed to a 2001 decision by the Indian Supreme Court directing the government to provide free lunches in government primary schools. This has turned into the world’s largest mid-day meal programme, reaching over 100 million children, according to Grant.

In another case the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Czech Republic had practiced racial discrimination in 2007 by wrongly channeling Roma children into remedial schools; the court awarded damages to affected families.

Rights have no meaning if you can’t hold people to account when they are broken

National level improvements include the incorporation of children’s codes into 70 countries’ national legislation, say child rights groups.

Many national poverty reduction strategies are beginning to call for more funding for children’s access to healthcare, education and social services, say Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) president Mohammed Ibn Chambas and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) West Africa director Gianfranco Rotigliano in a joint statement.

“[When] children are better fed, and have access to health facilities...there is a multiplier effect in that the family and community economy is boosted and people may stand a chance of moving beyond the subsistence level,” Rotigliano told IRIN.

However 77 million primary-school-age children worldwide are not in school while millions of children are unable to access even basic healthcare, according to the UN.

In West Africa three million children die before age five annually and 25 million are out of school, according to UNICEF.

For Save the Children’s Grant more accountability is critical. When children’s rights are violated and the national legal system does not protect them, children cannot access an international complaints procedure, she said. “This is a case of age discrimination. Every other UN treaty with reporting obligations has such a mechanism.”

An “era of enforcement” is needed to improve the lives of children, said Grant. National governments must make their laws comply with the CRC. “Rights have no meaning if you can’t hold people to account when they are broken.”

aj/np