MORNING
HR/CN/99/36
14 April 1999



The Commission on Human Rights this morning held a special dialogue on the rights of the child, focusing on the risks of marginalization and exclusion of children.

Representatives of countries, agencies and non-governmental organizations spoke of the need to combat child exploitation, both sexually and on the labour market. They also said the loss of rights of children such as the right to education, health, childhood and the right not to be discriminated against were issues that had to be addressed. Children had to have a global voice, and their needs had to be addressed on a macro-economic basis. Children’s rights should be viewed from a long-term socio-economic prospect.

Commission Chairperson Anne Anderson introduced the subject, saying children were the most vulnerable group in a society. She hoped the discussion would focus on the most vulnerable of children, the marginalized and the excluded.

High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson noted that the enjoyment by children of the rights to life, food, health, education, housing, freedom from physical abuse and debilitating injuries, and the right to a family life were denied or under serious threat in all parts of the world. She said the most important tool to preserve these rights was law.

Juan Somavia, the Director-General of the International Labour Office, said child exploitation was routine in many parts of the world and it was intrinsically linked to poverty. There was a need to fight child labour across the globe.


Stephen Lewis, the Deputy Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said that the Convention on the Rights of the Child had considerably raised the profile of children, however, considerable work remained to be done. Children were globally marginalized, and the next century should be a time of implementation of the rights of the child.

Jim Tulloch, Director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development at the World Health Organization, said that millions of young children and adolescents died or suffered because their basic rights to health and health care were not adequately addressed. There was a need to put these rights back on the agenda.

The Secretary-General of Swedish Save the Children, Susanne Askerlof, said that macro-economic policies did not take children into account, but this could be changed by addressing the implications of these policies for children as early and comprehensively as possible.

In summarizing the three-hour dialogue, Ms. Anderson concluded that the importance of this dialogue could not be overstated because children were the future. The Commission would be looking into meaningful ways to involve children in its work next year. The statistics on child labour and child mortality presented a sobering picture and more efforts had to be carried out in those fields. The effect of macro-economic policies on children was very important. Trade, debt and overseas development assistance were an essential part of the picture when looking at children’s rights.

The Commission Chairperson said taking responsibility for children’s rights was a relevant issue. The responsibility of national governments could not be underestimated, but at the same time, the international community should offer its help. If the world was serious about child rights, then efforts on all fronts had to be continued. Finally, she stressed the importance of follow-up of this dialogue.

Participating in the debate were Chile, Germany, Nepal, India, Canada, Uruguay, Norway, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Romania, Austria, Iraq, the United States of America, Switzerland, Japan, Sweden, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Brazil.

Representatives of Franciscans International, the Committee of NGOs Against Racism and Racial Discrimination, the International Human Rights Law Group, the International Save the Children Alliance, Defence for Children International, the World Federation of Methodist and Uniting Church Women, and the International Federation of Social Workers also addressed the meeting, as did Thomas Hammarberg, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Cambodia.

The Commission resumes its plenary at 3 p.m. this afternoon when it will continue its debate on the integration of the human rights of women and the gender perspective.


Statements

ANN ANDERSON, Chairperson of the Commission on Human Rights, said reinforcing and protecting the rights of children was an issue of central concern to all. While the Convention on the Rights of the Child had achieved near-universal ratification, it remained far short of universal implementation. Children were the most vulnerable human beings. She hoped to focus on the groups of children who were most vulnerable, the marginalised and the excluded, those who remained beyond reach, either because they were invisible or because they were seen to be ignored.

Ms. Anderson said this was an opportunity to look beyond the Commission's own agenda consideration of children's issues and its standard setting activities; she hoped the dialogue this morning would give an opportunity to examine some of the work with marginalised children. The dialogue would be informal, interactive and useful to Governments in assessing their performance in integrating the Convention into national polices and in realizing its potential for all children. She asked if enough was being done to identify and reach those groups on children who were on the margins of the society? The dialogue should inform and enrich the work of the Commission on Human Rights which had already considered issues which were keenly relevant to the implementation of child rights such as racism, extreme poverty and the right to education. The dialogue would pose questions as to the reach and effectiveness of the work at the Commission.

MARY ROBINSON, High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that the enjoyment by children of the rights to life, food, health, education, housing, freedom from physical abuse and debilitating injuries, and the right to family life were denied or under serious threat in all parts of the world. Children had become the first victims of economic crisis and frequent violence, and made up the bulk of the armies in many countries.

Mrs. Robinson said that the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child offered an important opportunity to review the achievements and remaining challenges in this area. The Commission on Human Rights had been leading the way in this reflection, not only through this special dialogue but also by having explored child rights and gender dimensions.

The High Commissioner said that a number of specific and important questions had been suggested as guides to this discussion. There was a need to understand better the human rights implications of marginalization and exclusion, and to see more clearly how the Commission, the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the other human rights mechanisms could effectively act to counter the marginalization and exclusion of children. The debate needed to consider how the Commission transmitted a sense of responsibility for human rights to the other organs of international society and the relevant bodies at the national level.

Mrs. Robinson invited the Commission to reflect on how it could recognize the rights of the child in its own work and whether the next Commission could reserve space for interaction between children, from the various continents, and the Commission's members.

JUAN SOMAVIA, Director-General of the International Labour Office, said that addressing child labour in an integrated way was crucial for development and social progress, and basically for a more decent world. The world had made important economic and social progress in many areas, however poverty and inequality persisted, with children often bearing the burden. Child labour constituted the single most important source of child exploitation and abuse. For many, childhood was marked by economic and social marginalization and exclusion. The situation of the girl child deserved particular attention, since girls were often the most exploited group.

Mr. Somavia said child labour was intrinsically linked to poverty, both a consequence and a cause of the latter. It was believed that child labour and therefore child marginalization was still increasing in some parts of the world. In developing countries, this was often due to structural adjustment which caused informalisation of the economy. Fortunately, world opinion had rallied to the cause.

In the ILO’s view, the progressive elimination of child labour required decisive action on a number of fronts: first, providing children with legal protection and legislative instruments by setting a minimum age for employment; second, the provision of technical cooperation between States and international organisations; third, development, a long-term and stable solution, including negating development fatigue which negatively affected the lives of children and their families.

Mr. Somavia said there was a chance for a decisive breakthrough in the struggle against child labour. There was a need for a global compact against child labour, in which Governments and the international community would commit themselves to combat the marginalization of children.

STEPHEN LEWIS, Deputy Director the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said one of the most powerful changes brought by the Convention on the Rights of the Child was the way in which children had become visible. Politicians, the media, non-governmental organizations and broader civil society felt a clear obligation to include children in their respective public domains, interventions, dialogues, debates and mandates. Children could no longer be ignored. However, just because awareness and sensibility were at a heightened pitch did not mean that common sense followed automatically. That was the principle of marginalization, and it played havoc with children's well-being. The marginalization of children came in every possible dimension: 12 million of them died under the age of 5 of preventable diseases; of the poor whose numbers were expanding relentlessly, 250 million worked at a brutally young age; 130 million of them were out of school, mostly girls; millions were victims of contemporary civil conflict such as those witnessed in Cambodia, Angola, Bosnia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Rwanda, and now Kosovo; and millions died of HIV/AIDS.

Mr. Lewis said the question was how to address the marginalized children. For the United Nations the rights of the child must become a centrepiece of reform initiative; must be considered by the Security Council on a dedicated basis; must be part of training of every peacekeeping venture; and must be part of every policy dialogue at country level. There had to be a way to make the findings of the Committee on the Rights of the Child more relevant. With regard to ethnicity, class, religion or culture, Governments needed to rescue children from this insidious path of neglect. In addressing the question of marginalization, sometimes the answers lay in fashioning new indicators, setting new goals, desegregating data, and rehabilitating the public sector. The beauty of the Convention on the Rights of the Child was that it worked. The next 10 years must be a time of implementation, without so much as a hint of social or economic exclusion, only then will the twenty-first century belong to children.

JIM TULLOCH, Director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Health and Development at the World Health Organization, said much remained to be achieved in the area of the rights of the child, especially to protect children from the horrors of armed conflict, sexual exploitation and trafficking, female genital mutilation, other forms of violence, and child labour. Much needed to be done because millions of young children and adolescents died or suffered because their basic rights to health and health care had not been adequately addressed.

Mr. Tulloch said poverty had contributed greatly to the suppression of democracy and neglect of basic human rights, including the right to health and health care. More that 10 million young children died each year from the effects of disease and inadequate nutrition. Seven out of ten deaths of children under five were from only five causes: pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, measles and malnutrition. Health problems were also a concern to adolescents who died because of accidents, suicide, violence, pregnancy-related complications, HIV and tobacco-related diseases.

WHO was committed to turning the urgent need for putting the basic right to health and health care of young children and adolescents more prominently on the human rights agenda and making it a reality. WHO had taken measures in this regard including, among others: stepped up efforts to adopt a rights approach to their work in child and adolescent health; worked to ensure the procedures for monitoring and promoting children's rights through United Nations machinery; and built capacity in States and other actors to facilitate the implementation of the Convention's health components including training and technical support

SUSAN ASKERLOF, Swedish Save the Children, said that a grave issue was the marginalization and exclusion of children. One form of marginalization was the rights of the child within macroeconomics. Children may not have been directly affected by monetary, trade, labour market or exchange rate policies, but the impact of these policies was most often mediated through its effects on the family. Child-orientated policies were therefore policies which were good for parents. Taking the rights of the child into account in macroeconomics could create enormous social and economic benefits for children, and thus for States and the international community. The implications of these policies should be addressed as early and comprehensively as possible, and the needs and rights of children should be mainstreamed into such policy dialogue.

Ms. Askerlof said the Commission and Governments could take the issue of children and macroeconomics forward in several ways. First, mechanisms linked to the Commission could prove to be very useful. Second, Governments should acquire profound knowledge of how their available resources were allocated to implement the rights of the child. Third, Governments should mainstream children's rights into their national macroeconomic policies. Non-governmental organizations were already doing work in the area of linking macroeconomics and children, in collaboration with each other, Governments, United Nations bodies, international financial institutions and other decision-making bodies. This needed to be intensified.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child needed to be made better known and used as a tool when forming macroeconomic analyses, policies and decisions, and in this way help prevent the marginalization and exclusion of children, Ms. Askerlof concluded.

Discussion

Speakers said that those responsible for development had to take into account the rights of the child. The continuing implementation of trade barriers only served to impede the elimination of poverty. The abolishment of these barriers would help to reduce child labour exploitation, thus achieving concrete results. The Commission needed to send clear signals to this effect.

Macro-economic policies needed to incorporate the interests of children. At the same time, poverty, as a cause of many ills affecting children, needed to be fought more comprehensively. Delegates said the rights of the child needed to move upstream since there were many issues competing for global attention. Governments needed to include children’s rights within their national and international policies on all matters.

The importance of child education was stressed. Children needed to be educated to have a future. The education of children would prepare society to enter into the 21st century, with hope that the abuses of this century would not continue into the next millennium. Education enabled children to become responsible parents in their turn. Free primary education was a right that needed to be respected globally. It was a social policy, with the aim of entering children into the education network so that they could learn outside the family. It also had a gender dimension, since it ensured the education of girls, and this gave them a possibility to escape from gender discrimination. Education also enabled children to avoid health risks.

The grave health challenges posed to children by the HIV/AIDS pandemic were discussed. Nepal wondered whether enough attention was being paid to this issue. India also spoke of the grave health consequences that poverty had upon children, notably the loss of the right to develop physically, and to live in health without suffering from malnutrition or easily cured illnesses. Many Governments said they were shocked by the statistics referring to child mortality given by the World Health Organization which showed that 10 million children died each year, as did 1 million adolescents.

The speaker for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said the HIV/AIDS pandemic was reversing development gains that had occurred over the last few decades, and it was a deplorable fact that developed nations had a range of therapeutic measures, whilst the developing nations had few if any. The effect on children of the AIDS pandemic was wide-ranging, from the loss of their parents and thus the loss of childhood; to the birth of children already contaminated by the virus, who had thus lost their right to life before their very birth; to the infection of child prostitutes.

The effect of conflict situations on children was raised. In such cases, children were either exploited in the labour market or became soldiers, a most grave situation. Armed conflicts also resulted in children refugees and displaced children.

Thomas Hammarberg, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Cambodia, called for the ILO Convention on Child Labour to be re-phrased on a broader basis so that most countries could ratify it. He urged the United States to consider ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. There was a checklist to make implementation of children’s rights more real, for example, necessary changes in legislation and budgeting in a country. This was an important instrument, and all agencies should look at it and try to find new ways to see that governments were assisted in developing measures that would help implementation.

The problem of sexual abuse of children was raised by many Governments and non-governmental organizations, with particular emphasis paid to child prostitution and child pornography. Children were sold to dealers who, in the case of the resistance of the children, threatened them with mutilation or murder. Some children were indeed killed in such circumstances. Child prostitution was a scourge that ought to be fought, unfortunately its roots lay in poverty. This was therefore an issue linked to development. The speakers also referred to the problem of Internet child pornography.

The marginalization and exclusion of children could be attributed to the growth of globalization, liberalisation and socio-economic restructuring. These policies did not take children into account, and this situation needed to be remedied.

Poverty affected children across all boundaries, whether national, economic, gender-based or cultural. It affected children’s rights in many ways, notably their right to shelter, health, health resources, and clean water. Many of these problems could be solved at a moderate cost. Yet children suffered from social neglect and social deprivation, even in industrialised countries. This, said Bangladesh, could in part be due to the prominence of violence in the media, which led to social de-sensitisation.

Children were the victims of discrimination, but as an already vulnerable group, they suffered these forms of discrimination in even graver forms. Children suffered from racism, xenophobia and gender discrimination from the very moment of their birth. Delegates said children needed to have a voice and the Commission ought to provide a voice for them, preferably after interaction with children.

Iraq spoke of the results of the economic embargo on Iraqi children, and appealed to the Commission to have an end put to the embargo. Many Iraqi children were dying or suffering from malnutrition and sickness.

There was a clear need for standard-setting developments in many areas, including armed conflict, sexual exploitation and child labour, in which all States needed to participate. The clear link between women’s rights and children’s rights was also raised, since the disregard of women right led to the disregard of children’s rights, and vice versa. This was a vicious circle. Women were the main protectors of the human rights of children, and this ought to be properly recognised.

The international community, NGOs, Governments and local organizations needed to realize the importance of protecting the rights of the child. Children were the future. Responsibility needed to be taken at all levels.