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Ceremony Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the Adoption
of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Geneva, 6 July 1999



Statement by Mary Robinson
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights


To the young persons in this room, a warm welcome. Thank you
very much for having come here today, some from far away, and for
having worked in order to tell us about your rights and how you live
them. Also, thank you for the music, last evening and this morning.

What is most important about this meeting is that you have come and
we will be able to listen and learn from you. In a few minutes your
representatives will address this meeting and that is very unusual.

While we often talk of the rights of children in this room and
elsewhere in this Palais, rarely do children take part. We should all
thank the President of the Economic and Social Council, Ambassador
Fulci, who is also a member of the Committee on the Rights of the
Child, for his valuable initiative.

When your representatives speak, we will be listening carefully.
Personally I promise to take to heart what you say, in my functions as
High Commissioner for Human Rights.

You young people come from all over the world. From countries
suffering from tremendous violence, from poor families and
neighbourhoods forced to the margins of society. Some of you are
fortunate to come from rich countries and peaceful neighbourhoods but
which have their own hidden violence and exclusion.

You will tell us of your problems and those of your relatives and
friends, but please also tell us of your joys. I am already aware of
what some of you do for the cause of human rights. In Colombia you
struggle for peace in a very violent society and members of Tapori
share friendship and support with the poor and excluded in both rich
and poor countries.

I must tell you that as I visit various countries as High
Commissioner for Human Rights, I too learn first hand what it means to
you to be a child or young person today.

In June I visited Russia and spent some time meeting with the young
people of that country. I was told that the children there were asked
where they feel their rights were not respected. Many replied: at
school. Well, in one Russian school I went to I learned that the
children, teachers and parents have together developed a list of Rules
in School which sets out the rights and responsibilities of all. On
the basis of this, they have organised their own school ombudsman to
supervise the observance of these rules and to mediate when children
feel their rights are being violated. This is a good example of how
children can be actively involved in knowing and protecting their own
and others' rights.

Unfortunately, many children do not yet enjoy even the most basic
rights. A short time ago I was in Sierra Leone and I held a little
girl aged 2 years, one of whose arms had been brutally cut off
during the civil war there. In Kosovo last week I met children whose
homes had been destroyed so that they had nowhere to live. Some had
had relatives killed. I visited a camp where members of the Roma
community had no clean water and disease was rampant. Such conditions
are the daily lost of many children.

These are extremely serious and painful situations which bring home
the real obligation of countries, institutions and non-governmental
organizations to act to prevent violations and to move rapidly to
restore human rights. I have often seen for myself the urgent need
for a strong and effective treaty to outlaw child soldiers.

Seeing all this activity, yesterday and here today, you might well
ask, why all the excitement?. It is, of course, not the World
Football Cup nor even the Women's Football Cup! But for you, youth of
the world, what we celebrate today may be finally, much more
important.

Ten years ago, all the countries of the world agreed without
dissent, that you have rights and they have a duty to protect them.

And how these rights were presented was revolutionary. The
starting point was that you children were full human beings with a
right to participate in your own development; you have your opinions
and the right to voice them.

What does the Convention say? First it says that whether you come
from a rich or poor family, regardless of your gender, your country or
religion, language or colour, you are all equal and have an equal
right to protection under the Convention.

The basic rights are to life, survival and development, which are
perhaps the rights most often violated. Then there is the right to
participate in decisions affecting you; the right to have your say, as
I mentioned earlier.

You have the right to be with your parents, to education and
health, to protection from dangers such as drugs, sexual and economic
exploitation and harmful work. And you have the right to be treated
fairly by Courts and the police.

Also, you have the right to rest and play and to take part in
cultural and artistic activities. But you still have to do your
homework.

There are other rights in the Convention, but even going by those I
have just listed, very few children can say they enjoy them all, and
many millions enjoy very few, or none at all.

Working so that all children can enjoy all human rights is a basic
responsibility of the Governments you see represented here. It is my
obligation as High Commissioner, and the obligation of the others in
this room, to work to support Governments in protecting your rights,
and to champion those rights everywhere. That, you will understand,
is not easy.

How do we know if we are making progress? Well the school year has
just ended in Switzerland and the end of the year report cards have
been handed out to students all over the country showing how they have
performed in the different subjects under study. Maybe that is a good
example.

What about a report card for the protection of your rights? Shall
we try to draw one up after this meeting? Shall we give grades to
your Governments and to the international institutions responsible for
your rights and welfare? I think it would be interesting to try.

Of course, under the Child Convention we are celebrating here today
every government regularly presents a report on respect for Child
rights in that country to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
The Committee talks to the Government, criticizes its performance and
makes suggestions. You can ask us or your country for copies of the
reports and the criticisms. The Committee is listening more and more
to children when it makes its criticisms of Governments.

But I wonder if you here, or you and your friends when you return
to your countries, would come up with the same results as the
Committee, if you were to prepare your own report.

When you go home, there is something very important you can do.
Tell your parents, friends, schoolmates about the Convention, about
how your rights and their rights are protected. Tell them that the
world's Governments, the Secretary-General of the United Nations,
UNICEF, other important organizations and my Office are trying to help
protect your rights.

And most importantly, work in your own neighbourhood and school to
protect human rights. In this way you can be our Ambassadors of Child
rights.

I would now like to take a moment to address the member States of
the Economic and Social Council, my colleagues in the Specialized
agencies, United Nations' Programmes and the Bretton Wood
Institutions.

This year's high level segment of the Council's session is focussed
on the elimination of poverty and we have some very interesting and
substantive reports before us. There are, of course, important
economic issues, but the elimination of poverty also has a direct
human rights component.

Sometimes that component is evident. For example the role of the
empowerment of women and gender equality in the elimination of poverty
has been well brought out by our Special Rapporteur on Extreme
Poverty, Ms. Ann-Marie Lizin.

Often , however, when topics such as economic development, trade,
investment, adjustment and international financial flows are
discussed, the human rights element, including the rights of the child
is absent.

As you know, some economists have regretted that today the social
dimension is absent from macro-economic policy formulations.

At the last session of the Commission on Human Rights, attention
was focussed on the marginalization and exclusion of children and
emphasis was placed on the fact that children were not taken into
account in macro-economic policy.

During that special dialogue the Secretary-General of Sweden's
Radda Barnen (Save the Children) informed us about the latest research
by that organization, UNICEF and university scholars, into
macro-economic policies and children's rights.

We know, of course, that decisions allocating resources to
education, health, social services, and unemployment benefits have
direct impacts on children. But what we have not fully realized is
that decisions in the areas of labour market policies, monetary
policies, trade policies and exchange rate policies can have very
clear and important impacts on child rights.

Labour market policies are an example. Increased unemployment can
affect millions of children, but there are countries where a
significant decline in unemployment was accompanied by a significant
increase in the percentage of children living in families without any
employed adult. The negative impact of this on children is serious.

Interest rate increases can directly affect children's access to
housing and trade and exchange rate policies can force children out of
school into the labour market.

Unfortunately, these affects on children are not taken into
consideration in policy formulation which has been "child blind". But
the results are not "child neutral," often they are "child
unfriendly".

As one economist has put it "Trade and exchange rate policies may,
for example, have a larger impact on children's development than the
relative size of the budget allocated to health and education. An
incompetent Central Bank can be more harmful to children than an
incompetent Ministry of Education".

On the national level, non-governmental organizations and academics
are increasing their attention on these issues and providing some
stimulating ideas. In countries such as South Africa, Sweden and the
United States, analyses of budgets and other policies are being made
from the child rights point of view and successful lobbying campaigns
have been launched.

Now, action is needed on the international level. I would like to
challenge the Economic and Social Council to take the lead in
integrating the rights of the child into the macro-economic policy
debate. As the Secretary-General of Radda Barnen has said, "taking
the rights of the child into account in macroeconomics can create
enormous social and economic benefits for children - and hence for
states and the international community. Neglecting them may lead to
high social costs, and endanger a sustainable economic development".

Integrating child rights into economic policy formulations will
require advocacy and research. But I believe as we succeed the lives
of children in developed and developing countries will be measurably
improved. And the Convention on the Rights of the Child provides a
universally agreed standard against which to measure progress.

I look forward to working with the Council and the participating
agencies in defining the macro-economic implications of the Convention
and identifying ways to adjust policy to promote greater respect for
the rights of children, such as those who are our guests today.

Thank you.