Daniel makes stuff, and, in his spare time, writes about things like movies, kid culture, and geek stuff.
The World's Children

The Sacramento Bee, in their photo blog The Frame:

Arun Kumar was born to disabled parents, beaten by his grandparents, ran away from home, got a job in a garment factory and had all his savings stolen by the police. He was only 11.

Today, at 13, he shares a cramped, dingy shelter with 63 other runaways and former street kids in New Delhi. He is one of the lucky ones.

A wrenching reminder of the conditions facing many of the world’s children. To paraphrase Jason Flom, “Our complaints in America are the complaints of the fortunate.”

Nov 22, 2009 :: Tagged under: , , , :: #

Bruce Lesley: The U.S. Should Ratify Children's Rights

Bruce Lesley, arguing for why the U.S. should ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Of all of the United Nations, the U.S. is only one of two, alongside Somalia, that has not ratified the Convention.

Although we often view our nation as first among all countries, in measures of our children, we rarely break the top ten. Tragically, the United States ranks 20th out of 21 industrialized nations in measures of child poverty and well-being. America has the second worst infant mortality rate, and our graduation rate places us 13th in the world.

Ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child would force our leaders to pay much-needed attention to the status of our children, and measure their progress against that of other countries. This undertaking transcends party politics and campaign rhetoric. In order to escalate our children back to the top, all our elected leaders must acknowledge this challenge, and work together to ensure our nation provides every child a chance to achieve the American Dream.

Nov 21, 2009 :: Tagged under: , :: #

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.

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"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: , , :: #

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: , :: #