United Nations Radio

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, is concerned that severe violations of human rights against children still persist worldwide.

This, she says, is despite the near universal ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Patrick Maigua reports from Geneva.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention provides an international legal framework designed to promote and protect the full range of human rights to which each child is entitled. Under the Convention, governments bear the primary responsibility for protecting children against human rights violations. Speaking in Geneva during celebrations to mark 20 years of the Convention, UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay noted that girls, children with disabilities, children from minority and indigenous populations, children in conflict and migrant children experience some of the worst forms of violations and discrimination.

"With the adoption of the convention by the General Assembly two decades ago, the international community unanimously recognized for the first time in history that children both girls and boys alike, are not simply the property of their parents or their care givers, but individual rights holders, fully entitled to their rights and in charge of their own destiny according to their age and level of maturity. Some of the most pervasive forms of discrimination and exploitation experienced by children have become more widespread and known since the adoption of the Convention."

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified international human rights treaty.  Patrick Maigua, UN Radio Geneva

(Duration: 1'33")