DEVELOPMENT: Watchdog Urges U.N. to Reaffirm Children’s Rights

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 10 2001 (IPS) - A leading human rights organisation is urging U.N. member states to make firm commitments next month to implement their landmark Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989.

“The implementation of the convention has been very spotty,” says Jo Becker of New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Speaking in advance of the U.N. Special Session on Children, scheduled to take place here Sep. 19-21, Becker says there is a wide gap between rhetoric and reality.

The Special Session, which is to be attended by more than 80 world leaders, “should push for the full implementation of the convention,” she says.

The convention, which upholds the rights of children worldwide, has been ratified by 191 countries, making it one of the most widely endorsed international treaties.

Becker, however, argues that some of the promises made by member states have remained unfulfilled: Millions of children remain without access to school while hundreds of thousands either toil as child labourers or have been pressed into service as child soldiers in ongoing conflicts worldwide.

Only two countries have failed to ratify the 1989 convention: Somalia and the United States.

Somalia, described by the United States as a failed state, has been struggling to establish a legitimate government for more than a decade.

In the United States, political opponents of the convention argue that children’s rights spelled out in the convention would undermine parental authority.

The convention stipulates, among other things, that every child has the right to life and that countries shall ensure, to the maximum, child survival and development.

Under the convention, primary education shall be free and compulsory and discipline in school should respect the child’s dignity. The convention also recognises the right of children to be heard in public discourse and policymaking.

The convention states that it is intended to set standards for governmental policies regarding children, and that it is not a code of parental conduct.

The United States signed the convention in February 1995 but the treaty remains without legal force in the country because the U.S. Senate has not ratified it.

According to Becker, Washington has tried to play down children’s rights throughout the negotiations leading up to this month’s Special Session. “Its attempts to remove references to the convention only highlight the U.S.’s failure to ratify the treaty,” she says.

The Special Session, which is a follow-up to the 1990 World Summit for Children in New York, is expected to adopt a plan of action endorsing the rights of children and to launch a global movement to elevate the status of children worldwide.

The proposed plan, entitled “A World Fit for Children”, says: “We, the governments participating in the U.N. Special Session on Children, are determined to seize this historic opportunity to change the world for and with children.”

Accordingly, member states will reaffirm their commitment “to complete the unfinished agenda of the World Summit for Children and to address other emerging issues vital to the achievement of the longer-term goals and objectives endorsed at recent major U.N. summits and conferences, in particular the U.N. Millennium Declaration, through national action and international cooperation.”

The Special Session will take stock of the successes and failures since the World Summit for Children 11 years ago, and also devise a new plan of action to benefit children worldwide in the next decade.

Breaking new ground, the Special Session will be dominated by child delegates – who were notably absent from the 1990 summit.

Carol Bellamy, executive director of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), says that it may seem like common sense to invite young people to a conference dedicated to their welfare “but this is a radical change for such high-level meetings.”

Literally, she adds, children will be rubbing elbows with presidents and prime ministers.

Becker says it is important to have the voices of children heard “but I hope these are not symbolic voices.”