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

Committee on the Rights of the Child

12 January 2015

The Committee on the Rights of the Child opened its sixty-eighth session this morning, hearing an address by Ibrahim Salama, Director of the Human Rights Treaties Division of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.  The Committee also adopted its agenda and programme of work for the session.
 
Ibrahim Salama, Director of the Human Rights Treaties Division of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and representative of the United Nations Secretary-General, made an opening statement in which he recalled the Committee’s achievements in 2014, including the adoption of the ground-breaking joint general recommendation and general comment on harmful practices.  The entry into force of the third Optional Protocol on Communications Procedure in April 2014 empowered children to complain about specific violations of their human rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its first two Optional Protocols.  In addition to the chronic, structural violations of the rights of the children, in 2014 the world was a witness to shocking outrages against children, including the massacre of 136 children in a school in Peshawar and possibly hundreds more killed in attacks against schools in Nigeria and Syria.  Referring to the constrained financial environment, Mr. Salama said that the focus of the Office would be on assisting each Committee to reduce backlogs and reach the targets set out in the General Assembly resolution 68/268 on treaty body strengthening.
 
Turning to the post-2015 agenda, Mr. Salama recalled that in his Synthesis Report the Secretary-General had explicitly called for a universal, human rights-based post-2015 sustainable development agenda and it also contained an unequivocal call to end violence against women, children, young boys and girls, as well as a call to focus on education for the 1.8 billion youth and adolescents in the world today.  Member States were now embarking on negotiations towards a new zero draft of the goals and indicators in May 2015, with the aim to adopt the Post-2015 Development Agenda at the United Nations General Assembly Heads of State Summit in September 2015.  In further updates, Mr. Salama spoke about developments in the Human Rights Council of relevance to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, in particular about the high-level launch of the Technical Guidance on the application of a human rights-based approach to the implementation of policies and programmes to reduce and eliminate preventable mortality and morbidity of children under five years of age. 
 
Kirsten Sandberg, Committee Chairperson, said that 12 countries and 20 State reports would be reviewed during this session by the Committee meeting in double chambers.  Chamber A would examine reports of Cambodia under the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict and the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, reports of Turkmenistan under the Convention and its two Optional Protocols on children in armed conflict and on the sale of children, reports under the Convention submitted by Jamaica, Gambia and Colombia, and the reports of Switzerland under the Convention and the Optional Protocol on the sale of children.  Chamber B would review reports submitted under the Convention by Dominican Republic, Sweden, Mauritius and Tanzania, as well as the reports by Uruguay and Iraq submitted under the Convention and its two Optional Protocols on children in armed conflict and on the sale of children.
 
During the session the Committee would continue the discussion on the follow up of the General Assembly resolution 68/268 on “Strengthening and enhancing the effective functioning of the human rights treaty bodies system”; it would adopt the recommendations of the Day of General Discussion on ‘digital media and the rights of the child’; and would continue its work on three draft General Comments, on public spending to realize children’s rights, on adolescents and on children in street situations.
 
The Secretary of the Committee provided an update on the reports received and ratifications since the sixty-seventh session of the Committee and said that five reports had been received by the Secretariat, bringing the number of reports for pending consideration to 84.  The total number of ratifications of the Convention on the Right of the Child remained at 194.  Four reports had been received under the Convention from South Africa, Bhutan, Malawi and Georgia, while two initial reports, of Nauru and Tonga remained overdue. 
 
Three new countries – Dominican Republic, Ghana and Guinea-Bissau - had ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the involvement of children in armed conflict, bringing the total number of ratifications to 159.  Two more States had ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.  Since the last session, three additional countries had signed the Optional Protocol to the Convention on a communication procedure, so the number of signatures was now at 48.  Three more countries had ratified this Optional Protocol – Andorra, Ireland and Monaco – bringing the number of ratifications to 14.  The Secretariat had received the initial report of Malawi on the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict.
 
The Committee will next meet in public at 3 p.m. this afternoon, when it will consider the initial reports of Cambodia under the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict (CRC/C/OPAC/KHM/1) and the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography (CRC/C/OPSC/KHM/1) in Chamber A, and the combined third to fifth periodic report of the Dominican Republic under the Convention (CRC/C/DOM/3-5) in Chamber B.
 
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