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30 September 1999
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HR/CRC/99/51
30 September 1999
COMMEMORATIVE MEETING HELD ON TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF
CONVENTION ON RIGHTS OF CHILD
Children Request World Children's Parliament
A commemorative meeting on the tenth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child this morning attracted many speakers advocating that strategic priority be given to children at the national and international levels.
The meeting was organized jointly by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and was chaired by Bernard Ramcharan, the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Children from different parts of the world participated in the discussion, with some suggesting that a world parliament for children be created. They also stressed that national measures concerning children should take their views into account.
Also taking part in the discussion were representatives of the specialized agencies United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF); United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and World Health Organization (WHO). Representatives of Finland (on behalf of the European Union), Poland, Sweden, Iraq and India also took the floor.
Representatives of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) World Organization against Torture and International Save the Children Alliance also spoke.
The commemorative meeting will resume in plenary at 4.30 p.m. on Friday, 1 October, in Room XX.
Statements
ALICE OUDRAOGO, Director of Policy, Development and Consultative Services of International Programme for the Eradication of Child Labour, International Labour Office (ILO), said there were approximately 60 million children around the world aged 4 to 14 who were subjected to forced labour, including prostitution. Last year, the annual conference of the ILO had adopted a Convention on the prohibition of extreme forms child labour. She stressed that States should ratify this Convention to better combat child labour. It was also necessary to promote a new culture in favour of children's rights. It was hoped that the present discussion on alleviation of the debt burdens of poorer countries would eventually enable them to discharge more resources to promote the rights of the child and the eradication of labour child.
Ms. Oudraogo said the ILO had benefited from its cooperation with the Committee on the Rights of the Child and from the information it had received from the countries whose reports it reviewed. She said that it was not a piece of legislation or a convention that would bring solutions to the problems pertaining to children. States and individuals should work towards the promotion and protection of the rights of the child.
ODILE SORGHO-MOULINIER, Director, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said that it was remarkable that the Convention had reached near universal ratification. That was a great historical achievement for the international community; it showed that children had become a higher priority throughout the world, and it was indeed an encouraging sign for everyone concerned about the well being of children and the future of the world.
Ms. Sorgho-Moulinier further said that it was an encouraging sign for all working to achieve sustainable human development that the rights of the child had been widely recognized. In 1998, UNDP had adopted a policy of "integrating human rights with sustainable human development", which outlined several important steps that the organization would take to implement that path-breaking policy. UNDP was currently in the process of strengthening its own capacity in the field of human rights and its relation to development.
KALLU KALUMIYA, Deputy-Director, Department of International Protection, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said that it was sadly apparent that despite the broad ratification of the Convention and the many important achievements in child protection, the most basic rights of children continued to be violated in many parts of the world and on a daily basis. Of the nearly 21 million refugees and displaced persons around the world today, more than half were children; 130,000 of the 240,000 Somali refugees in Ethiopia were below the age of 18, as were around 30,000 of the 57,000 Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia. By the same token, out of the estimated 1.2 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, nearly half a million were children. In Rwanda, more than 300,000 unaccompanied or separated children were displaced. Children made up a significant percentage of those displaced by events in Kosovo earlier this year and in East Timor in recent days.
Mr. Kalumiya stressed that the root causes of refugee displacement were invariably linked to conflict persecution and the denial of human rights. Refugee children -- like their adult counterparts -- fled to escape war, persecution and man-made upheaval. Children had always been the "easiest" victims of human-rights abuses, but were increasingly targeted, especially in ethnically based, intra-State conflicts.
MARTA SANTOS PAIS, Director of the Division of Evaluation, Policy and Planning, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said the level of support given to the Convention was unequalled by any other treaty of its kind. For the first time a comprehensive set of standards and values on children had been achieved, which were freely adopted by governments, designed to re-shape law, policy and practice, and to provide the reference against which progress was monitored.
Ms. Santos Pais said that the Convention was now an all-pervading reference in the work of the United Nations. In the process of United Nations reform, children's rights had been adopted as a cross-cutting theme for development cooperation and humanitarian action. The virtually universal ratification of the Convention had legitimatized the formulation of a common UN agenda for the realization of children's rights. In the process, the false dichotomy between development and human rights had finally begun to be set aside.
SOO-HYANG CHOI, of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), announced that on the initiative of the President of the National Assembly of France and the Director-General of UNESCO, a world parliament of children would be held next year in Paris.
JIM TULLOCH, of World Health Organization (WHO), stressed that for children to grow into healthy, productive adults, healthy development was absolutely essential. Unfortunately the opportunities were far from equitable for most of the world's children, and that was sadly reflected in the alarming numbers of child and adolescent deaths and disabilities. More than 10 million young children died needlessly each year from the effects of disease and inadequate nutrition. Without their most fundamental right -- the right to survive -- no other human rights had meaning. Many who did survive were unable to grow and develop to their full potentials.
Adolescents also faced major health problems despite being generally perceived as healthy. More than 1 million adolescents lost their lives each year -- mostly through accidents, suicides, violence, pregnancy-related complications and illnesses that were either preventable or treatable. Over 2.5 million young people per year became infected with HIV, while some 30 million adolescents started using tobacco. The Convention provided a powerful tool for channelling advocacy and support to national child and adolescent health programmes, as well as providing a conceptual framework for the design of integrated child and adolescent health programmes.
PEKKA HUHTANIEMI, Permanent Representative of Finland, on behalf of the European Union, said the tenth anniversary of the Convention reminded the international community of the need to advance the rights of the most vulnerable -- children. It was also an occasion to highlight the strength of the child, individually and collectively, and the need to look at the child as a subject, ready to take part in shaping its own future. There was widespread recognition of the need to invest in children. It had become generally accepted that all children had a fundamental right to develop physically, mentally and socially to their fullest potentials, as well to be protected from all forms of harm.
Mr. Huhtaniemi said the EU wished to stress its strong opposition to the death penalty, especially in the case of juvenile offenders. Capital punishment should not be imposed for offenses committed by persons below 18 years of age. The European Union believed that the relevant article of the Convention on the topic enshrined a founding principle of the right to life and generally accepted standards in that area. In addition, the Union was convinced that the promotion and protection of the rights of the child was one of the most effective ways to achieve long-term social development as a whole. Peace, sustainable development, democracy, good governance and human rights were values that would make all the difference for future generations. They were essential preconditions for the full enjoyment by children of all their human rights.
ERIC SOTTAS, Director of World Organization Against Torture (OMCT), said the issue of child labour, hazardous labour and forced labour of which the victims were minors, had been the object -- since 1919 -- of a series of specific and detailed conventions under the aegis of International Labour Office (ILO). Each year, the Commission of Experts of the ILO Conference had dealt with thorny issues related to violence whose victims were minors working well before reaching the minimum age without any protection. In the field of torture, a similar concern was also felt regarding capital punishment and detention conditions, which the ILO dealt with daily.
The prohibition of capital punishment and imprisonment for life without possibility of freedom for offenses committed by children under 18 had gained universal approval thanks to the Convention, which had been ratified by all States except two, one of which was the United States.
NEFSIAH MBOI, Chairperson, Committee on the Rights of the Child, said that in much of the world, great progress had been made on the right to survival and development and in some cases law reform was proceeding well. By the same token, the Committee sadly took note of the increasing number of places where, over the past 10 years, progress had slowed and in some places even stopped because of social unrest, civil war, horrendous economic conditions and the continuing and growing strength of the global epidemic of HIV/AIDS. Those were challenges faced by the global community as a whole, but there was no doubt that the negative impact was born inordinately heavily by the children of the world.
Ms. Mboi said the humane, open, and fair world to which all aspired could not be built and sustained by young people who entered adulthood having never learned the fundamentals of human rights. Equally important to the legal infrastructure and systems of protection was providing children the opportunity to practice the principles, habits, and skills needed for the promotion and protection of rights. They needed to understand their own rights and the obligations that went with those rights, as well as the role of rights in national life and nation building, and the contribution that mutual respect and fair play could make to the maintenance of peace and development in the family and community.
THOMAS HAMMARBERG, founding member of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, said legislators should analyze the impact of their legislation on children before putting it into practice. Governments should also increase their budgetary allocations for programmes related to children. Turning to the Bretton Woods institutions, he said the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, during their annual meeting next year, should focus on children and their problems and study ways to keep them from being marginalized. A small majority of countries had so far banned child beating, in implementation of article 19 of the Convention. States parties should take article 19 seriously and should enact legislation to prohibit corporal punishment.
KRZYSZTOF IAKUBOWSKI (Poland) recalled that Poland was the first country to advocate the creation of a convention for the rights of the child, adding that it was pursuing a policy in which it promoted and protected the rights of children.
MINGA ORKAN (Sweden) said each child should be treated as a unique person and the issue of children’s rights should be high on any agenda. Sweden had made the children’s rights issue a national priority, integrating children into all decisions concerning them. Others measures were also taken to strengthen the Ombudsman institution for children. Sweden also reflected the best interest of children in its international cooperation.
B. GNARIG, of International Save the Children Alliance, said discrimination against specific groups of children such as refugees, minorities, street children and disabled children around the world had increased. A lot had to be done to improve the situation. Children owned their rights; these rights were not given by adults.
SAAD HASSAN (Iraq) said that while the international community was celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Convention, Iraqi children were exposed to the most atrocious crime of genocide because of the economic embargo imposed against Iraq since August 1990, which constituted one of the great catastrophes of the century committed against children. The merciless economic embargo had up to now caused the death of more than a million Iraqi children. The children of Iraq did not only suffer the violations of their right to life, and the impossibility of having access to food and medical care which the Convention provided for, but they were subjected to all kinds of prejudices at all levels.
VEEBA S. RAO (India) said that as India had the second largest child population in the world, it was endeavouring to strengthen their welfare and it had so far succeeded in doing so. Recently, with cooperation with UNICEF, village-level child participation activities had been initiated in all parts of the country. A national commission for children would also be created next year with aim of monitoring and examining the conformity of all legislation with the Convention.
30 September 1999
COMMEMORATIVE MEETING HELD ON TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF
CONVENTION ON RIGHTS OF CHILD
Children Request World Children's Parliament
A commemorative meeting on the tenth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child this morning attracted many speakers advocating that strategic priority be given to children at the national and international levels.
The meeting was organized jointly by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and was chaired by Bernard Ramcharan, the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Children from different parts of the world participated in the discussion, with some suggesting that a world parliament for children be created. They also stressed that national measures concerning children should take their views into account.
Also taking part in the discussion were representatives of the specialized agencies United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR); United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF); United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and World Health Organization (WHO). Representatives of Finland (on behalf of the European Union), Poland, Sweden, Iraq and India also took the floor.
Representatives of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) World Organization against Torture and International Save the Children Alliance also spoke.
The commemorative meeting will resume in plenary at 4.30 p.m. on Friday, 1 October, in Room XX.
Statements
ALICE OUDRAOGO, Director of Policy, Development and Consultative Services of International Programme for the Eradication of Child Labour, International Labour Office (ILO), said there were approximately 60 million children around the world aged 4 to 14 who were subjected to forced labour, including prostitution. Last year, the annual conference of the ILO had adopted a Convention on the prohibition of extreme forms child labour. She stressed that States should ratify this Convention to better combat child labour. It was also necessary to promote a new culture in favour of children's rights. It was hoped that the present discussion on alleviation of the debt burdens of poorer countries would eventually enable them to discharge more resources to promote the rights of the child and the eradication of labour child.
Ms. Oudraogo said the ILO had benefited from its cooperation with the Committee on the Rights of the Child and from the information it had received from the countries whose reports it reviewed. She said that it was not a piece of legislation or a convention that would bring solutions to the problems pertaining to children. States and individuals should work towards the promotion and protection of the rights of the child.
ODILE SORGHO-MOULINIER, Director, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said that it was remarkable that the Convention had reached near universal ratification. That was a great historical achievement for the international community; it showed that children had become a higher priority throughout the world, and it was indeed an encouraging sign for everyone concerned about the well being of children and the future of the world.
Ms. Sorgho-Moulinier further said that it was an encouraging sign for all working to achieve sustainable human development that the rights of the child had been widely recognized. In 1998, UNDP had adopted a policy of "integrating human rights with sustainable human development", which outlined several important steps that the organization would take to implement that path-breaking policy. UNDP was currently in the process of strengthening its own capacity in the field of human rights and its relation to development.
KALLU KALUMIYA, Deputy-Director, Department of International Protection, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said that it was sadly apparent that despite the broad ratification of the Convention and the many important achievements in child protection, the most basic rights of children continued to be violated in many parts of the world and on a daily basis. Of the nearly 21 million refugees and displaced persons around the world today, more than half were children; 130,000 of the 240,000 Somali refugees in Ethiopia were below the age of 18, as were around 30,000 of the 57,000 Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia. By the same token, out of the estimated 1.2 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan, nearly half a million were children. In Rwanda, more than 300,000 unaccompanied or separated children were displaced. Children made up a significant percentage of those displaced by events in Kosovo earlier this year and in East Timor in recent days.
Mr. Kalumiya stressed that the root causes of refugee displacement were invariably linked to conflict persecution and the denial of human rights. Refugee children -- like their adult counterparts -- fled to escape war, persecution and man-made upheaval. Children had always been the "easiest" victims of human-rights abuses, but were increasingly targeted, especially in ethnically based, intra-State conflicts.
MARTA SANTOS PAIS, Director of the Division of Evaluation, Policy and Planning, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said the level of support given to the Convention was unequalled by any other treaty of its kind. For the first time a comprehensive set of standards and values on children had been achieved, which were freely adopted by governments, designed to re-shape law, policy and practice, and to provide the reference against which progress was monitored.
Ms. Santos Pais said that the Convention was now an all-pervading reference in the work of the United Nations. In the process of United Nations reform, children's rights had been adopted as a cross-cutting theme for development cooperation and humanitarian action. The virtually universal ratification of the Convention had legitimatized the formulation of a common UN agenda for the realization of children's rights. In the process, the false dichotomy between development and human rights had finally begun to be set aside.
SOO-HYANG CHOI, of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), announced that on the initiative of the President of the National Assembly of France and the Director-General of UNESCO, a world parliament of children would be held next year in Paris.
JIM TULLOCH, of World Health Organization (WHO), stressed that for children to grow into healthy, productive adults, healthy development was absolutely essential. Unfortunately the opportunities were far from equitable for most of the world's children, and that was sadly reflected in the alarming numbers of child and adolescent deaths and disabilities. More than 10 million young children died needlessly each year from the effects of disease and inadequate nutrition. Without their most fundamental right -- the right to survive -- no other human rights had meaning. Many who did survive were unable to grow and develop to their full potentials.
Adolescents also faced major health problems despite being generally perceived as healthy. More than 1 million adolescents lost their lives each year -- mostly through accidents, suicides, violence, pregnancy-related complications and illnesses that were either preventable or treatable. Over 2.5 million young people per year became infected with HIV, while some 30 million adolescents started using tobacco. The Convention provided a powerful tool for channelling advocacy and support to national child and adolescent health programmes, as well as providing a conceptual framework for the design of integrated child and adolescent health programmes.
PEKKA HUHTANIEMI, Permanent Representative of Finland, on behalf of the European Union, said the tenth anniversary of the Convention reminded the international community of the need to advance the rights of the most vulnerable -- children. It was also an occasion to highlight the strength of the child, individually and collectively, and the need to look at the child as a subject, ready to take part in shaping its own future. There was widespread recognition of the need to invest in children. It had become generally accepted that all children had a fundamental right to develop physically, mentally and socially to their fullest potentials, as well to be protected from all forms of harm.
Mr. Huhtaniemi said the EU wished to stress its strong opposition to the death penalty, especially in the case of juvenile offenders. Capital punishment should not be imposed for offenses committed by persons below 18 years of age. The European Union believed that the relevant article of the Convention on the topic enshrined a founding principle of the right to life and generally accepted standards in that area. In addition, the Union was convinced that the promotion and protection of the rights of the child was one of the most effective ways to achieve long-term social development as a whole. Peace, sustainable development, democracy, good governance and human rights were values that would make all the difference for future generations. They were essential preconditions for the full enjoyment by children of all their human rights.
ERIC SOTTAS, Director of World Organization Against Torture (OMCT), said the issue of child labour, hazardous labour and forced labour of which the victims were minors, had been the object -- since 1919 -- of a series of specific and detailed conventions under the aegis of International Labour Office (ILO). Each year, the Commission of Experts of the ILO Conference had dealt with thorny issues related to violence whose victims were minors working well before reaching the minimum age without any protection. In the field of torture, a similar concern was also felt regarding capital punishment and detention conditions, which the ILO dealt with daily.
The prohibition of capital punishment and imprisonment for life without possibility of freedom for offenses committed by children under 18 had gained universal approval thanks to the Convention, which had been ratified by all States except two, one of which was the United States.
NEFSIAH MBOI, Chairperson, Committee on the Rights of the Child, said that in much of the world, great progress had been made on the right to survival and development and in some cases law reform was proceeding well. By the same token, the Committee sadly took note of the increasing number of places where, over the past 10 years, progress had slowed and in some places even stopped because of social unrest, civil war, horrendous economic conditions and the continuing and growing strength of the global epidemic of HIV/AIDS. Those were challenges faced by the global community as a whole, but there was no doubt that the negative impact was born inordinately heavily by the children of the world.
Ms. Mboi said the humane, open, and fair world to which all aspired could not be built and sustained by young people who entered adulthood having never learned the fundamentals of human rights. Equally important to the legal infrastructure and systems of protection was providing children the opportunity to practice the principles, habits, and skills needed for the promotion and protection of rights. They needed to understand their own rights and the obligations that went with those rights, as well as the role of rights in national life and nation building, and the contribution that mutual respect and fair play could make to the maintenance of peace and development in the family and community.
THOMAS HAMMARBERG, founding member of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, said legislators should analyze the impact of their legislation on children before putting it into practice. Governments should also increase their budgetary allocations for programmes related to children. Turning to the Bretton Woods institutions, he said the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, during their annual meeting next year, should focus on children and their problems and study ways to keep them from being marginalized. A small majority of countries had so far banned child beating, in implementation of article 19 of the Convention. States parties should take article 19 seriously and should enact legislation to prohibit corporal punishment.
KRZYSZTOF IAKUBOWSKI (Poland) recalled that Poland was the first country to advocate the creation of a convention for the rights of the child, adding that it was pursuing a policy in which it promoted and protected the rights of children.
MINGA ORKAN (Sweden) said each child should be treated as a unique person and the issue of children’s rights should be high on any agenda. Sweden had made the children’s rights issue a national priority, integrating children into all decisions concerning them. Others measures were also taken to strengthen the Ombudsman institution for children. Sweden also reflected the best interest of children in its international cooperation.
B. GNARIG, of International Save the Children Alliance, said discrimination against specific groups of children such as refugees, minorities, street children and disabled children around the world had increased. A lot had to be done to improve the situation. Children owned their rights; these rights were not given by adults.
SAAD HASSAN (Iraq) said that while the international community was celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Convention, Iraqi children were exposed to the most atrocious crime of genocide because of the economic embargo imposed against Iraq since August 1990, which constituted one of the great catastrophes of the century committed against children. The merciless economic embargo had up to now caused the death of more than a million Iraqi children. The children of Iraq did not only suffer the violations of their right to life, and the impossibility of having access to food and medical care which the Convention provided for, but they were subjected to all kinds of prejudices at all levels.
VEEBA S. RAO (India) said that as India had the second largest child population in the world, it was endeavouring to strengthen their welfare and it had so far succeeded in doing so. Recently, with cooperation with UNICEF, village-level child participation activities had been initiated in all parts of the country. A national commission for children would also be created next year with aim of monitoring and examining the conformity of all legislation with the Convention.