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[claudio]

Human Rights Reader 44

An introduction to Children's Rights.

Review of some of the general underlying principles:

1. The motivation to realize all human rights (HR) should be based on a
sense of justice and solidarity; compassion is not the right motivation.

2. In this domain, Governments have Obligations of Result (e.g., achieving
the Millenium Goals) and Obligations of Conduct (e.g., implementation of a
plan to achieve the latter). Remember that they do not have the option to
indefinitely defer efforts to ensure the full realization of these
obligations; they have to immediately begin to take steps to fulfill them.
In that sense, we can identify HR violations through the direct action of
States and through their omissions. The latter, because there are minimum
core State obligations to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least,
minimum levels of each of the violated rights. Remember also that resource
scarcity does not relieve States from these minimum obligations and that all
basic needs are HR (but not vice-versa). HR cannot be prioritized either,
but actions to reduce and end their violation can and should e prioritized
(in the form of concrete, explicit plans).

3. Moreover, HR have no time limit: up until a specific right is fully
realized, this right is violated. This brings into serious question the
setting of goals to 'halve poverty or malnutrition'. [So, should we continue
to pursue goals such as halving malnutrition by 2015...?].

4. Always keep in mind that a HR approach does not only change what we
should do, but it will also change why and how we do our work. The first
change is to recognize poor people --and children-- as protagonists in their
development; this requires changing the mentality of all sorts of
development workers. There simply cannot be a HR-based society without
individuals who have internalized the HR philosophy (hence this Reader).

Realizing children's rights:

5. All human beings have HR, whether or not a particular country has
ratified a specific universal instrument. For example, children in the
USA --which has not yet ratified the Convention of he Rights of the Child--
have every bit the same rights as children living in countries that have
ratified the CRC.

6. Rights are to be seen as our exercise of free will and of choice and are,
therefore, dependent on the claim holders' capacity to have their rights
enforced. To have rights is not dependent on having current capacity to
exercise or assert them. There is a fundamental difference between
protecting children --because they are dependent (and deserve our
compassion)-- and respecting children, because they are powerful. [Actually,
the CRC prohibits those who already have power from exerting that power over
children].

7. UN-sanctioned conventional HR basically regulate the relationships
between individuals and the State. The CRC is different. Towards children,
it recognizes duties of parents and other non-state duty bearers at all
levels of society, including at the international level.

8. Not infrequently, the violations of children' rights are a direct result
of the violation of the rights of their care-givers own HR. To begin with, a
large majority of children whose rights are violated live in poor families
and poor communities. Therefore, a child-rights approach must always also be
focused on the alleviation of the poverty of the family. So, when we
advocate and mobilize for the realization of children's rights, we have to
do that in the larger context of HR, including women's, children's and other
pertinent economic, social and cultural rights.

9. Always keep in mind that rights are not just claims, but claims against
someone!    Therefore, in the Children's Rights domain (as much as in other
HR domains), capacity building has to be empowering so as to empower
children's guardians to confront Government inertia, as well as to empower
children themselves (yes, children...) to claim their rights.

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
aviva at netnam.vn

Mostly taken from U Jonsson, Realization of Children's Human Rights: Charity
or solidarity?,  Mimeo, 1997.