Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.

20 Years of The Convention on the Rights of the Child

By Daniel Bigler :: Saturday November 21, 2009

A landmark day in history: twenty years ago on November 20th, the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child was put forth, offering the first legally binding international convention to affirm human rights for all children.

UNICEF’s Dan Seymour offers his assessment, writing on the convention’s impact, its powers, and the future challenges it has left to face:

In every region of the world, we find numerous examples of the CRC’s impact on law and practice. In 1990, Brazil followed ratification of the Convention with a new Statute of the Child and Adolescent based on its principles. Burkina Faso created a Children’s Parliament to review proposed legislation, in response to the principle of participation set forth by the Convention.

The CRC was the first international convention to be ratified by South Africa, leading to changes such as the prohibition of corporal punishment and development of a separate juvenile justice system. The Russian Federation also set up juvenile and family courts in response to the CRC, while Morocco established a National Institute to Monitor Children Rights.

Finland took a number of new measures for children inspired by the Convention, such as a plan for early childhood education and care, a curriculum for the comprehensive school, quality recommendations for school health care, and an action plan against poverty and social exclusion ….

Like all powerful ideas, the CRC reflects a demand for deep and profound change in the way the world treats its children.

That the world fails to respect the rights of its children – even to deny that children have rights – is clear in the alarming numbers of children who die of preventable causes, who do not attend school or attend a school that cannot offer them a decent education, who are left abandoned when their parents succumb to AIDS, or who are subjected to violence, exploitation and abuse against which they are unable to protect themselves.

We cannot claim that the Convention has achieved what needs to be achieved. Rather, it has provided all of us with an essential foundation to play our part in changing what needs to be changed.

Tagged under: , :: #




"How Old Is Enough?"

The New York Times Editorial Board offers their response to hearings the Supreme Court held this past week about whether prisoners who committed crimes as children should still be made to serve life sentences.

The United States could be the only nation in the world where a 13-year-old child can be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, even for crimes that do not include murder. This grim distinction should trouble Americans deeply, as should all of the barbaric sentencing policies for children that this country embraces but that most of the world has abandoned.

I hope to tackle this subject more in-depth later this week, giving special consideration to the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child – of which the United States is one of the few countries left to ratify – and with an eye toward the implications the pending decision will have for children’s rights in the United States. Stay tuned.

Nov 15, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , :: #

Canadian Court: Parents Can't Sign Away Their Child's Right to Sue

By Daniel Bigler :: Sunday October 11, 2009

A CBC News report on a recent British Columbia court ruling that will allow a young man, who at 16 was injured in a martial arts school, to sue the instructor and sparring partner for negligence – despite his mother having signed a liability waiver at the time.

The instructor argued the suit should be dismissed on the grounds that the waiver that the mother signed shielded him from responsibility. In a judgment this week, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Peter Willcock disagreed, and is allowing the case to go ahead. Willock ruled that under the Infants Act of B.C., a parent cannot sign away a child’s right to sue for negligence.

“There a lot of parents who sign waivers for any number of places where their children have lessons, and those places will think they’re protected. But those waivers are useless,” said (the teenager’s lawyer, Bonnie) Lepin.

A very interesting ruling: less for the particularities of the young man’s case (and without knowing the evidence, this could or could not be a matter of actual negligence, which might justify damages) – but more for the Court’s recognition of the roles and rights children have. As Sara Grimes points out, Justice Willcock’s ruling is a clear determination that children possess separate, autonomous rights from their parents under the law – and their parents can’t encroach on those rights or sign them away. In the court’s eyes, the child is a separate individual.

Tagged under: , :: #




A Primer on Youth Rights

From Adam Fletcher and the Free Child Project: a brilliant introductory explanation of the rights of children and youth, and a history of how the movement for them has progressed over time.

Children’s rights generally boils down to wanting to do three things:

  1. Protect young peoples’ access to particular things like food, clothes, shelter, education, etc. These are usually called provision rights.
  2. Make sure that young people are safe from abuses, including physical, mental, and psychological abuse. These are protection rights.
  3. Give young people the opportunity to make, direct, evaluate and critique decisions that affect them throughout society. These are participation rights.

Most Americans generally believe that children are well off in their nation, but the statistical reality is scarily different. Play around with Gapminder or browse Childstats.gov to examine common provisional and protection-based well-being indicators of children and compare. As far as children’s participatory rights in the U.S. goes, let’s simply say that we value children as citizens about as much as we can throw Mount Rushmore – which is to say, not at all.

To make matters worse, the United States of America, as you may know, is one of only two countries to have signed, but not ratified – i.e. attempted to implement – the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Largely this has been a matter of political convenience (i.e., ratifying the convention would mean actually implementing policies to support it, like universal healthcare coverage for all children and families), though sometimes the debates surrounding the CRC and other United Nations proposals have revolved around issues of national sovereignty.

But to put it simply: children’s rights in North America are in a dismal state right now. That’s why constant activism and educational work like that of the Free Child Project is so utterly crucial.

Aug 20, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #