Committee on the Rights of the Child concludes sixty-eighth session

ROUNDUP

30 January 2015

Examines twenty reports from twenty countries under the Convention and its Protocols

The Committee on the Rights of the Child today concluded its sixty-eighth session. The Committee met in dual chambers at the Palais Wilson in Geneva from 12 to 30 January 2015 to review the promotion and protection of children's rights under the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols in Cambodia, Colombia, Dominican Republic, The Gambia, Iraq, Jamaica, Mauritius, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkmenistan, Tanzania and Uruguay.

The concluding observations and recommendations on the reports will be available on the Committee’s webpage from Wednesday 4 February 2015.

During the session, the Committee, in addition to considering reports of States parties, discussed the organization of its future work and methods of work, especially those concerning the Optional Protocol on a communications procedure; and the work of its focal group on the treaty-body strengthening process. The Committee continued work on three general comments on public spending to realize children’s rights; adolescents; and children in street situations. It adopted the recommendations of the day of general discussion on “Digital media and children’s rights”, held during the sixty-seventh session at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, on 12 September 2014. As the Committee decided at its sixty-second session to hold a day of general discussion every two years, it also looked at possible themes for the 2016 day of general discussion.

The Committee is a body of independent experts formed in 1991 to monitor the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by its States parties. The Convention gives a comprehensive collection of children's rights the force of international law. The Committee also monitors implementation of two Optional Protocols to the Convention: on the involvement of children in armed conflict, and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. A third Optional Protocol on a communications procedure was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 19 December 2011 and entered into force on 14 April 2014. It allows individual children to submit complaints about specific violations of their human rights under the Convention and its first two Optional Protocols.

As at 19 September 2014, the closing date of the sixty-eight session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, there are 194 States parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. As at the same date, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict had been ratified or acceded to by 159 States parties and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography had been ratified or acceded to by 169 States parties (one more since the beginning of the session: Haiti). The third optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a Communications Procedure had been ratified by 14 States.

The Committee will hold its sixty-ninth session in Geneva from May 18 to June 5, 2015 and review reports on the Convention or its Optional Protocols from the following States: Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, Latvia, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands and Cuba.

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For use of the information media; not an official record