Defence for Children International
United Nations Convention on the Rights of
the Child
Constructively innovativeThe Convention contains three major substantive innovations. Firstly, it introduces “participation” rights for children, which were notably absent from previous Declarations. Linked with this is the explicit recognition of the need to ensure that children themselves are informed about their rights. Secondly, the Convention takes up questions never previously dealt with in an international instrument: the right to rehabilitation of children who have suffered various forms of cruelty and exploitation, for example, and the obligation of governments to take measures to abolish traditional practices harmful to children’s health. Thirdly, it includes principles and standards that have so far figured only in non-binding texts, notably those relating to adoption and juvenile justice. The Convention also introduces two significant conceptual elements with important substantive ramifications:
child” (article 3) becomes the compulsory criterion “for all actions concerning children”, necessarily in conjunction with all pertinent rights set out elsewhere in the Convention;
responsible for the child) should provide guidance to their child in exercising his or her rights, in accordance with the child’s “evolving capacities” (article 5). The Committee on the Rights of the Child has identified the following articles as “general principles” that are basic to implementation of all rights contained in the Convention:
the child;
survival and development;
of the child, Although the Convention is progressive overall, not every aspect comes up to expectations, of course, let alone to hopes. The fact that the prohibition on participation in hostilities covers only children under the age of 15 has been particularly widely criticised in both governmental and non-governmental circles. As a result, in 1993 the Committee on the Rights of the Child successfully called for the establishment of a Working Group to draw up an optional protocol to the Convention dealing inter alia with the upgrading of this standard. The Working Group began this exercise in October 1994. Many NGOs have also contested the restricted rights on choice of religion afforded by the provisions of this Convention in comparison with those ostensibly granted to all human beings by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. And several individual NGOs are dissatisfied with the way certain of their specific concerns are dealt with, or with the fact that certain issues are not explicitly dealt with at all, e.g. protection from medical experimentation and the right to pre-school education. Nonetheless, whilst probably no organisation or government would say that it is completely happy with the text, it is indisputable that the Convention recognises substantially more and better rights for children than those that existed previously. |
