Tens of Millions of Children die every year from malnutrition and disease - The Rights of Children

 The Basic Principles of International Human Rights Law

The Rights of Children

ALKRTY -2021

Tens of Millions of Children die every year from malnutrition and disease. Countless others become victims of war, natural disaster, HIV-AIDS and extreme forms of violence, exploitation, and abuse. Other Million of children especially girls, do not have access to quality education. The United Nation Children’s Fund UNICEF, as well as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights OHCHR and other United Nations agencies, strive to sustain global commitment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which embodies universal ethical principles and international legal standards of behavior towards children.

The Committee on the Rights of the Child, established under the Convention, is a body of 18 independent experts that meets regularly to monitor the progress made by states parties in fulfilling their obligations under the Conventions and makes recommendations to governments on ways to meet those obligations. The Committee also issues its interpretation of the Convention’s provision in the form of general comments.

The General Assembly in 2000 adopted two Optional Protocols to the Convention:

Firs: One prohibits the recruitment of children under 18 into armed forces or their participation in armed conflict. Second:  the other strengthens prohibitions and penalties concerning the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. Although the Committee cannot consider individual complaints, a working group of the Human Rights Council is exploring the possibility of elaborating an optional protocol to the Convention to provide a communications and complaints procedure. Such a mechanism would further strengthen the protection of children’s rights.

Concerning child labor, the United Nations seeks to protect children from exploitations and hazardous conditions that endanger their physical and mental development, to ensure children’s access to quality education, nutrition, and health care, and in the long term, progressively eliminate child labor. The International Programmer on the Elimination of Child labor, an initiate of the ILO, seeks to raise an awareness and mobilize action through the provision of technical cooperation. Direct interventions focus on the prevention of child labor, the search for alternatives including decent employment for parents, and rehabilitation, education, and vocational training for children. UNICEF supports programs providing education, counselling advocates against the violation of their children rights.

Both the General-Assembly and the Human Rights Council have urged government to take action to protect and promote the rights if children, particularly-children in difficult situations. They have called on states to implement programmed measures that provide children with special protection and assistance, including access to health care, education and social services as well voluntary repatriation, reintegration, family tracing and family reunification, for children who are unaccompanied. The two bodies have also called on states to ensure that the best interests of the child are accorded primary consideration.

The special rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, as well as the special representatives of the Secretary-General in violence against children and for children and armed conflict report regularly to the General Assembly and to the Human Rights Council. The latter also reports to the Security Council.

The post of special representative of the Security-General on violence against children was established in 2007, in the wake of the World Reports in Violence against Children, which was presented to the General-Assembly the previous year. The report exposed for the first time the horrendous scale and impact of all forms of violence against children, highlighting the universality and magnitude of the problem in different sittings, the home and family, schools, care and justice institutions, the work placement, and the community. Its 12 overarching recommendations and several specific recommendations have provided a comprehensives framework for follow-up action. The mandate if the special representative if the Secretary-General for children and armed conflict, established in 1996 by the Assembly for period of three years, has been renewed ever since, most recently in 2008, for a further three years period.

 

Alkrty-2021