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Promotion
and protection of the rights of children Mr.
Chairman, In
the plenary, we shall shortly be commemorating the 10th anniversary of the
"Convention on the Rights of the Child". A decade is a long time
indeed. Yet, not much seems to have changed. Children are used in
conflicts by non-state actors without compunction. They increasingly
suffer in domestic violence. And, quite often, they are thrown into an
adults’ world to eke out a subsistence before they are in a position to
do so. We must, therefore, look at issues concerning children against
these concerns Regrettably,
however, we tend to look at these issues in isolation from the
socio-economic realities of the developing world. A narrow situation-based
approach or a human rights exercise is undertaken time and again without
taking into account the facts on the ground. What rights can be exercised
when families are progressively marginalised because of the inroads of
private capital, which invests precious little in social development? We
need to ask: how much corporate capital has gone towards building schools,
provide affordable nutrition and print cheap text-books. Or to bring
health care, improved sanitation, safe drinking water and roads to the
villages and cities of the third world? We can tackle within developing
societies the crucial issues of good governance, transparency, efficient
use of resources and affirmative actions for the welfare of children. But
we have no answer for the lack of financial and technological resources
without which no economic or social agenda can be carried out. Isolated
from this reality, we have airily talked about children in armed
conflicts, children in prostitution, children providing labour, education
and health of children and their human rights. Mr.
Chairman, all developing countries are concerned about their children,
about their rights, about their education and their health and welfare.
Almost all have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. But,
as we prepare to move into the next century, UNICEF reports that about 130
million children remain without access to basic education, 200 million
children under the age of 5 are malnourished and 12 million under-five
deaths occur each year due to malnutrition. These are concerns that grip
developing countries. Yet, at the core lies the strongly positive
correlation between poverty and exclusion. The thin spread of the meagre
resources on these areas of concern hardly makes a dent. The developing
countries require a minimum critical mass of resources. But these are
usually not available to them. Mr.
Chairman, we would like to thank the Special Rapporteurs, Mr. Olara Otunnu
and Ms. Ofelia Calcetos-Santos, for their reports. We are glad that the
Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child
pornography has determined the interlinkages between the judicial system,
the media and education in the manifestation of this problem. We agree
with the Special Rapporteur’s identification of the role of the family
in such problems. The Special Rapporteur rightly states that in a vast
number of cases where a child has been exploited, the roots can be traced
back to the familial context. The work of the Special Rapporteur on
Children in Armed Conflict has helped to draw attention to this serious
problem. However, while Governments are open to scrutiny, what mechanism
exists or can be developed to ensure that non-state actors and terrorists,
who are the ones who mostly exploit and abuse children in armed conflict,
can be brought to book? This, notwithstanding, we are fully in agreement
with the Special Rapporteur when he says that the most damaging loss that
a society can suffer is the collapse of its own value system. Indeed, the
destruction of a society’s future is inevitable if its children grow up
warped, traumatised and without hope. |