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Children’s Rights: “in serving the best interests of children, we serve the
best interests of all humanity."
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the first legally binding instrument designed to
protect and promote the rights of people under 18 years old. Its adoption by the UN General Assembly
on 20 November 1989 is celebrated annually as Universal Children’s Day. It has now achieved near-
universal acceptance, with ratification by 193 parties.
The Convention sets out rights that children enjoy as human beings and also identifies special rights and
protections they require during this vulnerable phase of their lives.
The rights in the Convention are predicated on the principles of universality, non-discrimination and
accountability. This means that they apply equally to every child, including the most disadvantaged. The
Convention creates a moral imperative, determined by the world leaders and governments who drafted
and subsequently joined the Convention, to ensure that efforts to protect and promote children’s rights
must be equitable. Every child, no matter how disadvantaged by parental income or family
circumstance, geography, disability, race or gender, has an equal right to enjoy the protection of the
Convention and the rights it sets out.
There are 54 articles in the CRC. These set out universal human rights, including the rights to:
survival;
develop to the fullest;
protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation;
participate fully in family, cultural and social life.
9. Poverty
According to UNICEF, 25,000 children die each day due to poverty. Around 27-28 percent of all children
in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the
bulk of the deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries
have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. Almost two in three people lacking
access to clean water. Some 1.8 million child deaths each year as a result of diarrhea. For the 1.9 billion
children from the developing world, there are: 640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3), 400 million with
no access to safe water (1 in 5) and 270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7). 10.6 million died
in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and
Italy.) 1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. 2.2
million children die each year because they are not immunized. Millions of parents in developing countries
must daily cope with the fact that their children may not survive the first critical years of life; in many cases,
the diseases that threaten their children’s lives are preventable.
8. Life as Refugees
Of the 50 million refugees and displaced people in the world, approximately half are children. War is the
primary factor in the creation of child refugees. It is also a principle cause of child death, injury, and loss of
parents. In the last decade, war has killed more than 2 million children, wounded another 6 million, and
orphaned about 1 million. Children also flee their homes because they fear various forms of abuse such as
rape, sexual slavery, and child labor. Circumstances of birth also play a role in depriving children of a legal
home. Each year 40 million children are not registered at birth, depriving them of nationality and a legal
name.
The combined ravages of AIDS and war have created a large pool of orphan refugees and displaced
children, particularly in Africa. The toll of Rwanda’s civil war, for example, left orphan children to head some
45,000 Rwandan households, with 90 percent of these headed by girls. “Separated Children” are those
under age 18 and living outside their country of origin without parents or legal guardians to care for or
protect them. Every year, about 20,000 separated children apply for asylum in Europe and North America.
Overall, children account for approximately half of all individuals seeking legal asylum in developed
countries. Separated children are not often legally recognized as refugees in western countries. In Europe,
for example, where there may be as many as 50,000 separated children at any given time, only an
estimated 1-5 percent of those who apply for asylum are granted refugee status.
6. Child Neglect
Neglect is an act of omission, or the absence of action. While the consequences of child neglect can be
devastating, it leaves no visible marks. Moreover, it usually involves infants and very young children who
cannot speak for themselves. James M. Gaudin Jr., in “Child Neglect: Short-Term and Long-Term
Outcomes”, reported that, compared with non-maltreated and abused children, neglected children have the
worst delays in language comprehension and expression. Psychologically neglected children also score
lowest in IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests.
Emotional neglect, in its most serious form, can result in the “non-organic failure to thrive syndrome,” a
condition in which a child fails to develop physically or even to survive. According to Gaudin, studies have
found that, even with aggressive intervention, the neglected child continues to deteriorate. The cooperation
of the neglectful parents, which is crucial to the intervention, usually declines as the child’s condition
worsens. This shows that it is sometimes not that easy to change the parental attributes that have
contributed to the neglect in the first place.
Parental neglectful behaviors include not keeping the child clean, not providing enough clothes for
keeping warm, not making sure the child attended school, not caring if the child got into trouble in school,
not helping with homework, not helping the child do his best, not providing comfort when the child was
upset, and not helping when the child had problems. The prevalence of childhood neglect ranged from
3.2% in New Hampshire, United States, to 10% in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 19.4% in Singapore, and
36.4% in Pusan, Korea.
5. Child Labor
An estimated 211 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working around the world,
according to the International Labor Organization. Of these, 120 million children are working full time to
help support their impoverished families.
There are millions of children whose labor can be considered forced, not only because they are too
young to choose to work, but also because they are, in fact, actively coerced into working. These include
child bonded laborers — children whose labor is pledged by parents as payment or collateral on a debt —
as well as children who are kidnapped or otherwise lured away from their families and imprisoned in
sweatshops or brothels. In addition, millions of children around the world work unseen in domestic service
— given or sold at a very early age to another family.
Forced child laborers work in conditions that have no resemblance to a free employment relationship.
They receive little or no pay and have no control over their daily lives. They are often forced to work beyond
their physical capacity and under conditions that seriously threaten their health, safety and development. In
many cases their most basic rights, such as freedom of movement and expression, are suppressed. They
are subject to physical and verbal abuse. Even in cases where they are not physically confined to their
workplace, their situation may be so emotionally traumatizing and isolating that once drawn into forced
labor they are unable to conceive of a way to escape.
4. Child Prostitution
In Thailand, NGOs have estimated that up to a third of prostitutes are children under 18. A study by the
International Labor Organization on child prostitution in Vietnam reported that incidence of children in
prostitution is steadily increasing and children under 18 make up between 5 percent and 20 percent of
prostitution depending on the geographical area. In the Philippines, UNICEF estimated that there are
60,000 child prostitutes and many of the 200 brothels in the notorious Angeles City offer children for sex. In
India as many as 200,000 Nepali girls, many under the age of 14, have been sold into red-light districts.
Nepalese girls, especially virgins, are favored in India because of their fair skin and young looks. Every
year about 10,000 Nepalese girls, most between the age of nine and 16, are sold to brothels in India. In El
Salvador, one-third of the sexually exploited children between 14 and 17 years of age are boys. The
median age for entering into prostitution among all children interviewed was 13 years.
As a matter of fact, keeping up with the initiatives undertaken by European institutions or by other
relevant stakeholders, such as NGOs or UN bodies, like UNICEF, can easily get someone in a tangle.
Thus, the International Juvenile Justice Observatory, conjointly with its European branch, the European
Juvenile Justice Observatory, took the initiative to compile a series of relevant measures, policies and
decisions developed or drafted by various actors (European Union institutions, Council of Europe,
UNICEF, NGOs, etc.) in order to underline the link between the work of the two Observatories and the
very topics discussed at a European level.
These will encompass any initiatives related to juvenile justice, but will also take into consideration
decisions developed in other related areas, such as the championing of children rights or the fight
against social exclusion.