The United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has been well incorporated into national laws across the world, showed a report issued in Beijing on Friday by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Xinhua News Agency.
A recent study released in the report, a special edition of the UNICEF series on "The State of the World's Children", found about two thirds of the 52 countries the UNICEF reviewed have made specific references to child rights in their national laws, with a third of them integrating the CRC into their constitutions.
Almost all of these countries have made strong efforts to bring their legislation into conformity with the convention by adopting child rights codes or through the gradual, systematic reform of their existing laws, or both, according to the report.
The core principles of the CRC, the first legally binding international agreement on child rights protection, are non-discrimination against children, devotion to their best interests, their rights to life, survival and development, and respect for their views.
Including these rights in national laws has led to some significant examples of positive changes, stated the report. "Slovenia, for example, recognizes the right to nationality - and correspondingly, access to public services - for stateless children."
Many countries in Latin America, eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States have adopted new children's codes that reflect the treaty's provisions.
However, integrating the convention's principles into national legislation does not guarantee that children's rights will be realized, showed the report. "The success of legislation depends on enforcement and changes in social attitudes and practices, as well as sound principles and provisions promoting children's rights."
Many of the practices that are most harmful to children are part of social traditions and cultural attitudes that have been prevalent for generations, it stated.
Therefore, simply passing a law is not enough, stated the report. "It must be backed up with ongoing educational and awareness-raising initiatives, capacity-building, sufficient resources and collaborative partnerships, including children as full participants."
The report was released in a move to celebrate the Universal Children's Day and the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the CRC on Nov. 20, 1989.
Xinhua and the UNICEF launched a global media campaign for children's rights in the run-up to Nov. 20. A 24-hour global live multimedia coverage of events related to children's welfare is scheduled on Friday. |
