SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS CHILDREN'S RIGHTS ARE NO LONGER OPTIONAL BUT BINDING OBLIGATION
Press Release
ECOSOC/5830
SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS CHILDREN'S RIGHTS ARE NO LONGER OPTIONAL BUT BINDING OBLIGATION
19990706 Special Meeting of Economic and Social Council Celebrates Tenth Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child(Reissued as received.)
GENEVA, 6 July (UN Information Service) -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan told a meeting celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child this morning that these rights could no longer be seen as optional and that respecting them was not an act of charity but a binding obligation.
The special 90-minute meeting of the Economic and Social Council was addressed by a series of senior human rights officials, along with several youth who are active in promoting child rights.
The Secretary-General said it was encouraging that the Convention had been adopted by almost every country in the world; it was an indication that these States were willing to be guided by a comprehensive set of standards and values.
Francesco Paolo Fulci, the President of the Economic and Social Council, noted that the simplest and most profound way to recognize human nature, origins and destiny was to care for children in order to ensure a better future for them and for the world in which they would live.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said that at high-level meetings such as ECOSOC, where topics such as economic development, trade, investment, adjustment, and international financial flows were discussed, it was important not to lose sight of the human rights element, including the rights of the child.
Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), outlined challenges yet to be faced, such as eradication of easily
preventable childhood diseases such as diarrhoea, measles and acute respiratory infections, which still caused the deaths of 12 million children under age five every year, often for simple lack of adequate food, nutrition, clean water and sanitation.
Nafsiah Mboi, Chairperson of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, said not enough was done in most countries to sanction violations of child rights or to encourage exposure of those who practised, promoted, protected, or profited from the violation of child rights. Use of children in armed conflict was an extreme example of global acceptance of the violation of the rights of some children, she said, and it could no longer be tolerated.
Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict, said that in the cases of ongoing conflicts, the international community should insist on access and on concrete measures for the protection of children.
Among children addressing the session were Juliette Borella of ATD Fourth World, Movement Tapori; Farlis Calle, of the Colombia Movement of Children for Peace; and Elana Gouveia, of Continuadores, a children's non-governmental organization in Mozambique.
Following conclusion of the special ECOSOC meeting, the Council adjourned briefly and then began a discussion on "the role of employment and work in poverty eradication: the empowerment and advancement of women".
Statements
FRANCESCO PAOLO FULCI, President of the Economic and Social Council, said the Convention on the Rights of the Child was the most universal treaty ever adopted by the international community. This was because children were the most precious asset as they were the future of humanity. The simplest and most profound way to recognize common nature, origins and destiny was to care for children in order to ensure a better future for them and for the world in which they would live. The Convention was a milestone in this direction. It was the first legally binding international instrument that incorporated the full range of human rights for children. The implementation of the agreement had been remarkable. The Committee on the Rights of the Child operated under a missionary spirit, raising awareness across the planet. The objective was a fully fledged "rights of the children approach". This was a revolution, that should be pursued.
KOFI ANNAN, Secretary-General of the United Nations, said children's rights were everyone's business, and to make them a reality, everyone had to be mobilized. Only if everyone worked together could children's rights be guaranteed for all children.
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The Convention on the Rights of the Child was a reminder that basic human rights began at birth, the Secretary-General said, and it was encouraging that this treaty had been adopted by almost every country in the world. States had freely pledged to be guided, in all their actions affecting all children within their jurisdiction, by a comprehensive set of standards and values. That meant that children's rights could no longer be seen as optional; respecting them was not an act of charity; it was a binding obligation.
Almost every area of Government policy affected children in some way, Mr. Annan said; but children had no vote -- no say in the political process. It was up to adults to defend children's rights, knowing the terrible costs that society as a whole would pay if it failed to look after them. The whole future of the human race would be determined by how the world cared for its children today.
Mr. Annan then told the children in the audience not to wait until they had grown up -- they should learn their rights now and also should begin preparing for the time when they would have to protect the rights of their own children.
MARY ROBINSON, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that this meeting was important because while the rights of children were often discussed, rarely did children take part. The children present at the meeting came from all over the world, from countries that had suffered from violence, from poor families and neighbourhoods, or from rich countries where they might have suffered from hidden violence and exclusion. Many children did not yet enjoy the most basic rights. There were extremely serious and painful situations which brought home the real obligation of countries, institutions and non-governmental organizations to act to prevent violations and to move rapidly to restore human rights.
Ten years ago, all the countries of the world agreed without dissent that children had rights, Mrs. Robinson said. The way these rights were presented was revolutionary. The starting point was that children were full human beings with a right to participate in their own development. The basic rights to life, survival and development were perhaps the rights most violated. Very few children enjoyed all the rights guaranteed by the Convention, and millions enjoyed few, or none.
Under the Convention, the High Commissioner said, every Government presented regularly a report on its respect for its children's rights to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. This year's high-level segment of the Council's session focused on the elimination of poverty, and there were many interesting and substantive reports before it. The elimination of poverty had a direct human rights component. Sometimes this was evident, but sometimes, when topics such as economic development, trade, investment, adjustment, and
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international financial flows were discussed, the human rights element, including the rights of the child, were absent. It had not been fully realized that decisions in the areas of labour market policies, monetary policies, trade policies and exchange rate policies had very clear and important impacts on child rights. Policy formulation had often been "child blind", with the results often being "child unfriendly". Action was needed on the international level as well as the national. Integrating child rights into economic policy formulations would require advocacy and research, but it would improve the lives of children measurably.
CAROL BELLAMY, Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said it was fitting that the voices of children would be heard today in ECOSOC; the children of Colombia, for example, had been leading actors in that nation's movement for peace; the children of the Tapori movement gave visibility to the marginalization to which extremely poor children were subject; and the children of Mozambique represented the primary victims of that country's civil war and now stood as the best hopes for its future.
The Convention had led to many positive changes, Ms. Bellamy said, among them the entry into force of a global ban on anti-personnel landmines. Yet many challenges remained. Easily preventable childhood diseases such as diarrhoea, measles and acute respiratory infections still caused the deaths of 12 million children under age five every year, often for simple lack of adequate food, nutrition, clean water and sanitation. Some 130 million children, most of them girls, were not in school; millions more were denied basic, quality educations. An estimated 250 million child workers were effectively denied childhood, many of them objects of sexual trafficking and abuse. The spread of HIV/AIDS also posed a grave threat. Meanwhile such challenges were made more daunting by the precipitous decline in official development assistance as well as reductions in basic social services in many countries, coupled with the continuing burden of external debt.
The UNICEF had begun a dialogue with its partners on a "Leadership Initiative for Children", Ms. Bellamy said; it was hoped the process would lead to a series of events, including a special session of the General Assembly in 2001. A global agenda was needed that grew out of the vision of the Convention -- a world where children experienced childhood as a joyous experience.
OLARA OTUNNU, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, said the Convention on the Rights of the Child was about the protection and welfare of all children. It protected the most vulnerable children of all -- those involved in conflicts across the globe, in one way or another. The following measures should be taken on their behalf: the launch of an era of application of norms for their protection on the ground; local communities would be supported in their efforts to revive and strengthen traditional values protecting women and children in times of war;
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in the midst of ongoing conflicts, the international community should insist on access and concrete measures of protection; the issue of protection and welfare of children should be placed on the agenda of every peace process; in post-conflict situations, those designing programmes for rebuilding societies should make the needs of children a central concern; the international community should seek a more systematic and effective way to protect and support children displaced by war within their countries; and in situations of imperfect peace, the donor community should support schooling and medical facilities for children.
Mr. Otunnu commended persons who had protected the rights of children in many dangerous and difficult situations, whether they had read the Convention or not. These people were close to the true spirit of the Convention, and should be looked up to as examples. The way forward for the international community was clear.
NAFSIAH MBOI, Chairperson of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, said the Committee had been charged with examining progress made by States parties in enhancing child rights and so had been in a privileged position to monitor advancements under the Convention. Committee members were not prosecutors but were part of the global learning process about promotion and protection of child rights.
Among the lessons learned over the first decade of the Convention's existence, Ms. Mboi said, were that more had to be learned about collaboration and cooperation on behalf of children -- where suspicion, mistrust and competition existed, progress was invariably slow; children were the losers in the short run, nations in the long. A second lesson was that it was important not to be satisfied with averages; they sometimes looked so good that serious problems affecting individual children were overlooked. Third, it was necessary to learn to work better with children and young people -- in the family, the school, and community. And fourth, sadly, not enough was done in most countries to sanction violations of child rights or to encourage exposure of those who practised, promoted, protected, or profited from violations of child rights.
Use of children in armed conflict was an extreme example of global acceptance of the violation of the rights of some children, Ms. Mboi said; it could no longer be tolerated, and the next decade of the life of the Convention should be marked by prompt ratification of the draft optional protocol to the Convention dealing with the involvement of children in armed conflict.
JULIETTE BORELLA, of ATD Fourth World, Movement Tapori, said her message was for those children represented by the Tapori movement who had been lost in the world. Children did not want to lose any other children, they wanted to build a world where happiness and friendship gained ground. All parents
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should have their children with them and should try to keep their families together. Parents kept their hope by feeding their children and sending them to school. Many children in the world were forced to fight to keep their parents honour -- because of this, it was hard to have friends. Every child needed a friend. All children should form one big family, be happy and united, and accompany those who were alone. But it was not easy to be a friend to those who were alone.
Ms. Borella said there were many families who were hunted and were forced to hide, alone and without friends. But the earth and the sun belonged to all. Children could not stand to see sad people. All children had the right to live somewhere safe with their family, to play with other children, to live like children, to learn at school, and to be the joy of their family. Adults should allow children to respect each other and to help each other. Respect, solidarity and tolerance should be taught from childhood. The world should discover that all children were the same no matter their country or their race. Then maybe each adult would want for every child what he or she would want for their own children, and the world would truly change. All children had the hope that some day every child would know that the world wanted it and would love it.
FARLIS CALLE, of the Colombia Movement of Children for Peace, said that while she was poor, the country she came from was very rich, with fertile soil, especially in Uraba, where she lived. However, Uraba also suffered from war -- families and children were attacked, forcefully displaced, and systematically denied their rights. Youngsters reacted against such social injustice in various ways -- some by taking part in the conflict, others by pursuing a peace movement.
In 1996, during elections, 2.7 million Colombian children had voted for the right to live in peace, she said; the following year, 10 million adults, inspired by this example, had voted in favour of peace and against war, armed conflict, forced displacement, kidnapping, disappearances, and massacres. The conflict had caused 4.8 per cent of the national budget to be used for safety and defence, which diminished funds available for education and health; lack of education led to further poverty and to environmental problems such as deforestation; in addition it caused people to live in high-risk areas. The earthquake that had struck in January had destroyed the dreams of thousands of poor people. The Movement of Children for Peace had reacted with solidarity in support of the children of Armenia, the affected area.
The Movement of Children for Peace had been nominated for the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize, Ms. Calle said; receiving the award would help strengthen the peace process in Colombia. For her part, her activities with the peace movement had resulted in a scholarship to the most prestigious university in Bogota. She wanted to be a psychologist in order to be able to cure the souls
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of the children affected by the conflict and to help break the violent cycle suffocating the country.
ELANA GOUVEIA, of Mozambique - Continuadores, said that Mozambique may have been one of the poorest countries of Africa, but it now had peace. This peace gave children the opportunity to demand their basic rights that had been denied during the conflict such as schooling, vaccination, and clean water. There were still some children who did not enjoy these rights. With peace, the children of Mozambique could enjoy their right to express themselves, and had done so on a national level. They had learnt how to use the Convention as a tool to protect and guarantee their rights. The scourge of HIV/AIDS had concerned them greatly, as it was a disaster far above the casualties due to the 16 years of conflict. Many children in Mozambique still did not know much about the dangers of HIV/AIDS. Children in Mozambique had decided to exercise their right to contribute to the development process, and were attempting to inform other children and adults of the dangers of HIV/AIDS. Sexual education should be introduced in the schools. All should unite to fight HIV/AIDS, and this should be an important part of the celebration of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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