20th Anniversary of the Rights of the Child

22 November, 2009 (21:50) | human rights

It’s the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Just how well is the world doing in regard the rights of children? I started this website because of a little boy I found shining shoes on the streets of Istanbul. I was moved by his difficult life and by the poverty he experienced. I have never forgotten this child and I tried my best to help him when I could.

There are still children on the streets of Istanbul and in other cities of Turkey as there are elsewhere around the globe. Children are still used as cheap labour, sold off as child brides, sold off as prostitutes, used as obedient soldiers in wars they do not really understand. Children in so many countries are still denied their basic rights. Who will defend the human rights of these children?

One billion children worldwide are still deprived of their basic needs of food, shelter, and clean water. Nearly two million children throughout the world are malnourished and suffer stunted growth. These stats come from UNICEF. Furthermore, UNICEF says, there are some signs of promise in that the mortality rates of children are declining and more children are receiving an education. There is hope, but still a lot more work to do.

The Convention of the Human Rights of the Child has the most support of any human rights treaty in the world. It was signed by 193 countries. There are only two countries, Somalia and the United States that have not ratified the agreement. Although the United States signed the Convention in the 1990s, it was never submitted to the Senate for ratification because of the rather bizarre argument that the Convention infringed on the rights of parents and was not consistent with their state laws and local legislation. Go figure. I haven’t. But perhaps Obama will move forward on this issue.

During the last 20 years, many other countries though have instigated laws and code to protect the rights of the child including Convention declarations to “ensure that children are safe-guarded from violence, abuse, discrimination and exploitation.”

However, one of the greatest setbacks to the rights of children is the current world wide recession, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This recession which causes population shifts has threatened the very safety of children. Along with the current global financial crisis, there have been numerous earthquakes, tsunamis and other climate problems that have made achieving the rights and protection of children more difficult to ensure. These factors will, no doubt, have future repercussions on the health and wellbeing of children, in the present and with future generations to come.

Last year, I joined Bloggers Unite for Human Rights where bloggers worldwide would blog about any issue concerning human rights that they cared to write about. Bloggers chose to unite and write on May 15, 2008, to voice their concerns regarding abuses of human rights. I chose the same subject, the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Because I will always remember that little boy of Istanbul, so far from his home village, working on the streets harder than most adults I know, underfed and without the opportunity of education.

Although there has been progress on the rights of children in some countries, there is still much work to be done. Legislation, infrastructure and the political will of the governments in power need to be in place to protect children.

Until there are no more children working on the streets of Istanbul or elsewhere in other countries around the world, support human rights and children’s right, donate to organizations which support children’s rights and act up now.

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