Rights of the Child

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by Anup Shah

This Page Last Updated Saturday, September 27, 2003

This page:http://www.globalissues.org/article/152/rights-of-the-child.

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As Amnesty International's report from their Children's Action 1999 campaign mentions,
"To guarantee the human rights of children is to invest in the future". Many nations, it
would seem, fail to realize this.

The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, is the main international body dedicated to
the rights of every child.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the major convention countries sign
up to.

Somalia and USA are the only two countries in the world that have not ratified
the convention
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However, as UNICEF point out, "Somalia is currently unable to proceed to

ratification as it has no recognized government. By signing the Convention,
the United States has signalled its intention to ratify - but has yet to do so."

On the one hand it would seem that the U.S. has no excuse not to sign,
but as UNICEF further point out, in the U.S. ratifying treaties can sometimes
take a very long time, even decades.

And despite the U.S.'s perceived short-comings here, according to a report by Human
Rights Watch, many countries have also failed to enact the convention that they have
signed to. Their press release for this report summarizes some of the common problems
children face, such as:

Refugees (children make up over half of the world's refugees)

Hazardous labor exploitation

physical abuse

sexual violence and exploitation

recruitment as child soldiers

Police abuse and arbitrary detention of street children

Orphans and abandoned children without adequate care

Sexual abuse and trafficking

Lack of access to education, or substandard education

The U.N. Special Session on Children in 2002 shows that a lot of the above problems still
exist, as well as many others. Furthermore, the Session has highlighted many nations
from the United States, to Syria, Iran and various others have in different ways opposed
to certain aspects of children's rights. (The previous link has more details.)
The Convention also has some additional optional protocols, such as the the Optional
Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in
armed conflicts.

The Protocol also clarifies that 18 years is the minimum age for direct
participation in hostilities, for compulsory recruitment and for any recruitment by
non-governmental armed groups.

However, many nations, including wealthy and powerful countries such as UK

have contentious issues when it comes to such additional protocols, especially in
terms of the use of child combatants.

For example as Amnesty International reported, the United Kingdom in June

2003, "formally ratified an important child rights treaty - pledging to try to avoid
deploying its under-age soldiers into active combat - but then also undermined the
treaty's purpose by reserving wide discretion to use young people in battle." In
addition, Amnesty also noted that No other European country apart from the UK
deploys under-18s. The Convention defines a child to be anyone under the age of
18 unless national laws indicate otherwise. In the UK's case, the age of 18 is the
age to vote, and as Amnesty International states in another article this implies
children in the UK areold enough to kill but too young to vote.

Many countries employ children as soldiers, making the 300,000 estimated the
world over.

Child Labor
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by Anup Shah

This Page Last Updated Monday, January 01, 2001

This page:http://www.globalissues.org/article/62/child-labor.

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o

http://www.globalissues.org/print/article/62

Child labor is not an easy issue to resolve; while it seems noble to immediately withdraw
investments and cooperation with firms and factories that employ child labor it may do
more harm than good. Many of these children are from very poor families and work to
pay for their family and/or their education. Depriving them of this income has led to
some children seeking different, lower paid work, and even prostitution in some cases.
Other ways with schemes to help children would likely be needed so that this labor can
be phased out. The same has been suggested by the International Labor Organization
(ILO), at a meeting in Mexico City in 1999, who also pointed out that child labor affects
over 250 million children, 30 percent of which are in Latin America. A gradual phase out
is said to be a more preferable solution.
According to the UK Committee for UNICEF, poverty is the most common factor
contributing to child labor. In addition, "debt, bloated military budgets and structural
adjustment programmes imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank, have eroded the capacity of many governments to provide education and services

for children, and have also pushed up prices for basic necessities". (For more
information on these aspects, also see this site's section on causes of poverty and the
harmful structural adjustment policies.)
According to UNICEF, Somalia and USA are the only two countries in the world that
havenot ratified the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child. The
convention is the world's most widely ratified treaty. (USA have signed it, but Somalia
has neither signed, nor ratified it, at the time I write this -- and Somalia doesn't
currently have an internationally recognized government, which is why they cannot
ratify the convention. The US have no such excuse.)

A huge movement called the Global March Against Child Labor, (which
didn't get much media coverage in the USA), was an important event with marches in
many major cities around the world drawing global attention towards the most heinous
human rights violation: child labor and child slavery. The six-month long intercontinental
March took off from Philippines in mid-January 1998, culminating in Geneva to coincide
with the Debate Session of the International Labor Organization (ILO) on the Draft
Convention on Child Right.

To find out more about children with regards to trade, labor, rights etc. the following
may be helpful:

Save the Children Fund UK and their section on child labor

The Global March web site. They also have a link to other websites that are
supporting the movement.

Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund. In particular:

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The Convention on the Rights of the Child.

State of the World's Children annual publications examines key issues

about children.

A report on the State of the World's Children, 1997 focused on Child Labor,
for example

Casa Alianza, a South American-based group helping street kids.

OneWorld Guides to:

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Child Rights and the section on war.

Child Labor.

Boes.org is a site devoted to child rights.

Causes of Hunger are related to Poverty

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by Anup Shah

This Page Last Updated Sunday, October 03, 2010

This page:http://www.globalissues.org/article/7/causes-of-hunger-are-related-topoverty.

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Consider the following:

Over 9 million people die worldwide each year because of hunger and
malnutrition. 5 million are children.

Approximately 1.2 billion people suffer from hunger (deficiency of calories

and protein);

Some 2 to 3.5 billion people have micronutrient deficiency (deficiency of

vitamins and minerals);

Yet, some 1.2 billion suffer from obesity (excess of fats and salt, often
accompanied by deficiency of vitamins and minerals);

Food wastage is also high:

In the United Kingdom, a shocking 30-40% of all food is never eaten;

In the last decade the amount of food British people threw into the
bin went up by 15%;

Overall, 20 billion (approximately $38 billion US dollars) worth of

food is thrown away, every year.

In the US 40-50% of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten

Of the food that does eventually reach households, some 14% is

wasted, resulting in something like $43 billion of wastage

If food reaching supermarkets, restaurants and cafeterias is added

to the household figure, that wastage goes up to 27%.

In Sweden, families with small children throw out about a quarter of

the food they buy

In some parts of Africa a quarter or more of the crops go bad before

they can be eaten. More generally, high losses in developing nations are
mainly due to a lack of technology and infrastructure as well as insect
infestations, microbial growth, damage and high temperatures and humidity.

The impacts of this waste is not just financial. Environmentally this

leads to:

Wasteful use of chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides;

More fuel used for transportation;

More rotting food, creating more methane one of the most

harmful greenhouse gases that contributes to climate change.

Reducing wastage in the US by half could reduce adverse

environmental impacts by 25 percent through reduced landfill use, soil
depletion and applications of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.

The direct medical cost of hunger and malnutrition is estimated at

$30 billion each year.

Sources

In a world of plenty, a huge number go hungry. Hunger is more than just the result of
food production and meeting demands. The causes of hunger are related to the causes
of poverty. One of the major causes of hunger is poverty itself. The various issues
discussed throughout this site about poverty lead to people being unable to afford food
and hence people go hungry.