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Continuing the Fight For Child Rights
Children's Rights
It was exactly twenty years ago today that world leaders set binding international standards of Children's Rights when they approved the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Since its adoption by the UN General Assembly on November 20th 1989 the convention has become the most widely ratified international human rights treaty in history.
Today, it's twentieth anniversary, UN Radio's Marsha Branch looks at some of the achievements and the works in progress of the convention.
BRANCH - The Convention on the Rights of the Child has made possible remarkable achievements in making the world a safer and friendlier place for our children. Some of these include a 20% reduction in the annual rate of deaths of children under the age of five since 1990. Access to HIV prevention and treatment has been expanded. There is now greater access to improved water sources and more children are in primary school.
But there is still much to be done. As UNICEF's Executive Director Ann Veneman points out, despite these advances, the agenda for child rights remains an unfinished one.
VENEMAN - An estimated one billion children are deprived of one or more services essential to survival and development. On average, around twenty-four thousand children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes such as pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria. Nearly two hundred million children are chronically malnourished. Over a hundred million children are not attending primary school, with more girls than boys missing out. Girls who do not attend school are more likely to suffer sexual violence, to be trafficked or to be forced into a child marriage.
BRANCH - Inspired by her own story, Grace Akallo has dedicated her life to working as a civil society advocate for children. A former child soldier, Grace was abducted at the age of fifteen by the notorious Lord's Resistance Army that terrorized Northern Uganda for twenty years. Fortunate enough to survive and recover from her childhood experience, Grace told an audience of journalists and policy makers assembled at UNICEF in New York on Thursday, that no child should ever have to live through what she has seen and felt.
AKALLO - I can say this to you with the complete conviction that exploitation of children is not just simply a breach of an international treaty. It's a pain. It's suffering and confusion and damage. It's hope lost and hope betrayed.
They bear the brunt of hunger, war, disease and other suffering. Children are kidnapped, sold, starved, beaten and set to work around the clock, surviving on scraps of food from roadside garbage. They are malnourished, neglected and written off as worthless. Their cry for rescue goes beyond just tears. And if tears were to be the one factor to determine the suffering of children, the world would be filled to the brim.
BRANCH - While Grace's story inspired those attending the launch of the State of the World's Children's Report, one celebrity helped to raise event's profile. UNICEF ambassador Lucy Liu said while she has witnessed the best in humanity, she has also seen the worst.
LIU - I have traveled to the DRC where I met children who have served with armed groups and children who survived sexual violence and rape. I visited Pakistan where I met children and women who had lost family members to the deadly earthquake. I recently produced the documentary Red Light which chronicles personal stories of children in Cambodia who are victims of the international child trafficking industry.
BRANCH - Every injustice committed against our children, forces them to surrender their childhood, and that is perhaps the greatest injustice of all. Irrespective of who they are, where they live or what is happening in their corner of the world, children are human beings and it is our duty as their guardians to ensure their rights are upheld.
I'm Marsha Branch for UN Radio
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