I'd like to give you an idea of how the Convention came in to being, in other words, from the

moment that it was proposed to the moment that it was adopted. I had the pleasure and the
great experience of being the spokesperson for the non-governmental organizations
involved in the drafting process, so I was present for most of the time. It all started off with
a proposal by Poland in 1978, which was based almost entirely on the 1959 Declaration of
the Rights of the Child. This was because Poland wanted to ensure that the Convention
could be adopted during the International Year of the Child, which was in 1979. So Poland
felt that it was the best idea to provide a text which had already gained international
approval in 1959, and could be, Poland felt, adapted to a Convention, so that it would be a
lasting memory of the International Year of the Child in the coming year. Poland was
particularly happy with
the text of the Convention because it concentrated almost entirely on economic, social and
cultural rights. There was only one civil right in the Declaration, and therefore that
corresponded to Poland's thinking at that time in relation to the rights of the child. When
the proposal was made to the then-Commission on Human Rights, as is the case with all
treaties or all future treaties, the UN Secretary General contacts all member states and
inter-governmental organizations requesting feedback on the proposal. And this feedback
was to some extent supportive but also very critical. The first criticism that was made of
the text was that it didn't cover a wide range of rights. Precisely, only the economic, social,
and cultural rights essentially. So there was no mention for example, of juvenile justice
questions. There was no mention of children in armed conflict situations. There was no
mention of children of minorities or indigenous peoples. And there was no mention, for
example, of adoption. That meant that it was incomplete in its scope in the view of many
states. It also took no account of development since 1959, when the Declaration had been
drafted. These developments were many, including the fact that the UN itself was a very
different organization. Of course, decolonialization had taken place in the ensuing period.
And there were many new human rights instruments, in particular the two covenants on
civil and political rights, and on economic, social, and cultural rights, which had come into
force in that ensuing period, and which had to be taken into account in drafting a new
Convention on the human rights of the child. Another criticism was that it was not worded
in a way that was suitable for a treaty. The Declaration was worded in a way which doesn't
correspond to the kind of technical language required in a treaty. It lacked detail, and it
contained vague formulations of the principles that it put forward. Another criticism was
that the monitoring mechanism was very weak. States just had to report to the Economic
and Social Council under the Polish proposal, and not as is the case, of course, today, to a
treaty body, the Committee on the Rights of the Child. And then there was a very forceful
argument which was that precisely because the International Year of the Child was about to
begin on the 1st of January 1979. It will be a good idea to wait until the end of that year to
see what new initiatives had been taken, what new concerns might be brought up, and to
take account therefore of the International Year of the Child, results in drafting this new
Convention. Strangely, some quarters remained completely silent. They had made neither
supportive nor
critical noises. And one of the most surprising in that regard was UNICEF, which didn't say
a word. And that was to mark the first
half of the drafting process. In other words,
that UNICEF did not become involved in the drafting process until later,
as I'll explain. Despite this criticism on
the part of member states, the UN General Assembly
nonetheless suggested, or urged even,
that the Convention be adopted during the International Year
of the Child. But the Commission on Human Rights
decided otherwise and set up a working group of
member states in order to deal with all the criticisms and
suggestions that have been made and
to come up with another draft. And as a result of this,
Poland submitted a revised draft of the Convention in order to have
it as the basic working document. And this revised draft was very different,
much improved, and served indeed as the basis of
the drafting in the ensuing years. So how did the drafting work? Well, first of all, as I said it
was a working group called an Open-ended
Working Group which was set up to deal with the revision and
the drafting of the Convention. It was composed of member states
of the Commission on Human Rights, plus Any other interested
member state of the UN, plus inter-governmental
organizations with an interest such as WHO, the ILO, and of course UNICEF. And then also
allowed to be
present were international non-governmental organizations who
were interested in the process. Interestingly, it took its decisions
on the basis of consensus. In other words,
there was never a vote on text. Everything had to be adopted by consensus. The
unfortunate result of
that was that several issues were binned because
there was no consensus. For example there was no
mention of early marriage even though there was
considerable support for the idea of having a specific reference
to early marriage in the convention. The idea was dropped because
no consensus could be found on the way in which
it was to broached. But if there were
disadvantages to consensus, the big advantage of course
was that there was thorough discussion on all topics
to be broached and the resulting text was
the one that could be put to the UN General Assembly in the end because
there was no more discussion needed. Everybody had been happy
with the text as it stood. However, the drafting process did not have much priority on the
part of states. They were not willing to invest
a great deal into the drafting process and this resulted in rather
poor attendants during the drafting sessions which took
place once a year, just for week. And so,
there was initially very slow progress. One, two, three, four paragraphs or
articles at each session, that's all. So, the drafting of the convention did
not get off to a magnificent start. An important issue for the drafting was
the state of the East-West relations. Of course, in the early 80's
the Cold War was still a reality. And since the proposal had
come from Poland, the Western states were often opposed on principle to a number of
suggestions made
by counterparts in the East simply because of the Cold War
political reality. And this carried on until the mid-80s
when the Cold War started to thaw. So as of '85, '86,
there was a definite improvement in the way the convention was drafted. It's not only East-
West but
also North-South which was an issue. And that was because there were few
countries, in particular from Africa but also to a certain extent from Asia,
who could invest the time in joining the drafting group and therefore they were
somewhat underrepresented. They did have some very
good representatives but they were still
underrepresented numerically. And that meant that there were fears that
this was going to become a convention drawn up by the North which would not
take account of concerns in the South. But by the end, the non-industrialized countries had
improved their participation and that included countries of Islamic Law. And therefore, by
the end, we had
a situation where participation was indeed more reflective of the reality
of the world as a whole. Another aspect which had an influence on
the drafting was the fact that several other instruments were being
formulated at the same time. Part of instruments for
example in this field of Juvenile Justice and
in the field of Foster care and adoption. And so there was a kind of
transfer of experience from the drafting of those instruments
into the drafting of the convention. The NGOs were not
automatically given the floor. In fact they could be invited to take
the floor during this drafting session. But they had no rights to do so. Initially, the NGO's
who were
interested in taking part were disorganized, and
rather desperate bunch. At the time there were no
fewer children's rights NGOs. Plenty of children's in NGOs but
no children's rights NGOs. With consultative status at the UN,
in other words that therefore had the right to take
part in the working group. Human rights NGOs,
there were some interested. Human rights NGOs of course knew
the UN system very well and indeed had taken part in certain
drafting sessions of other instruments. The children's NGOs on the other
hand didn't know the system but they had obviously
the substantive knowledge. But each was working in its own way. They weren't
collaborating and
therefore, as a group, they did not have the kind of credibility necessary for
making an impact on the convention. So in 1983, the NGOs realized
that they were not having the influence that they needed to have and
they got together and created what they called
an NGO Ad Hoc Group for the convention on the rights of the child. So for the first time,
human rights and children's organizations joined hands. And they produced their
first joint proposals, coordinated joint proposals in writing,
for the 1984 session of the working group. And from that time on everything changed.
NGOs were given the floor
almost systematically and they had created sufficient
credibility to be listened to and in many cases, to provide effective guidance on the drafting.
As of 1986, UNICEF, which had supported
the NGO group, UNICEF, itself, became involved in the substance
of the drafting process. This also had a terrific impact on the way that states regarded
the drafting of the Convention. Overall the NGOs had a significant
impact on about a third of the substantive articles and
some impact on another third. So it was quite unprecedented in terms of the drafting of
an international instrument. Why did the process take so long? Well, partly because it was
based on this consensus which meant that every detail,
every comma, had to be agreed by
the whole working group. But also because there were some
truly controversial issues. Let me give you an idea of four of them. Firstly, what is a child?
When does childhood begin? When does childhood end? There was tremendous discussion
on this,
from two aspects. One, obviously, is, when does a human being begin his or
her childhood? Is it at zero, is it at conception,
is it at some other point? And then when does childhood end. Is it at adolescence, or
is it at the age of majority? In the end, it was decided not to
resolve the first one, to leave it open, by having both a reference
in the preamble to the protection of children before and
after birth. And for the second, for
the age at which childhood ends, it was decided that in
the end it would be 18, because that was the age at which most countries set the age of
majority. But you can imagine that it took a great deal of discussion to reach
that kind of consensus. Then there was a totally
different example. That of the reaffirmation
of fundamental freedoms. Fundamental freedoms,
such as the right of association, the right to choose one's religion, the right to receive and
impart information. These fundamental freedoms
existed in the covenants on civil and political rights,
which was enforced. But frankly few people realize that these fundamental freedoms
covered
children as well because there was no lower age limit of which
such rights would be afforded. So there was a big debate on whether or not they should be
reaffirmed in
the context of the convention. In the end they were, and happily so. Again, a very different
example
is the one on adoption. When Poland made its
revised proposal in 1979, the emphasis was on facilitating
adoption for children. But in the 80s,
there were many situations particularly though not only in terms
of inter country adoption, where bad practice and indeed
criminal activity had been observed. So by the time we got to the end
of the drafting process, there was much more circumspection about
adoption as a child protection measure. And the aim as is now
reflected in the final convention was less to
facilitate adoption and much more to ensure that children were
protected throughout the adoption process. So now we have a situation where
instead of facilitating adoption, the first obligation of states
is to insure that it takes place with the best interests of the child
as the paramount consideration. Quite a leap, quite a change over the ten years of the
drafting. And the final example
is the controversy over the age as of which
children would be allowed to participate in an armed conflict. The convention now says 15,
and
that was the lowest common denominator. It was almost not consensus. It was the lowest
common denominator
on which countries could agree. And we now know, of course, that so many countries
wanted to see the minimum
age of participation in conflict at 18, in other words, that it should be
prohibited completely in the convention. That there was the initiative to draw up an
optional protocol on
the subject in 2000. So that was the basic
scene of the development of the convention from its initial
proposal through to adoption. And there were tensions right up to the last moment but
consensus prevailed. And what we need to do now, is to ensure that we keep the basis for
making sure that the fact
consensus remains intact.