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Last Monday, the international community observed World Children’s Day; the theme: “For Every Child, Every Right”. The day has been marked on 20 November since 1954, for nearly 70 years.
Looking at the rather superficial statements on its behalf in our space, I wondered if we ever stop to think about what the rights of a child have been declared to be, and what they really encompass.
In 1959, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child; 30 years later it added the Convention of the Rights of the Child. The Declaration lists ten principles that guide it. They are broad, wholesome, and offer an idealistic world for nurturing the young.
Space doesn’t allow me to list them fully, but they mostly include the things we expect them to. I figure it is worth sharing a bit, because—given what rampantly goes on in the world—we can say that adults have not been inclined to abide by them. All around us, children continue to be the targets of horrendous abuse.
Child labour, eked out under inhumane conditions, provides our consumer-driven world with the nonsensical culture of fashion for every season (and I don’t mean the ones associated with weather patterns), mountains of discarded clothing an enormous contributor to environmental pollution; other goods deemed so necessary and popular that cheap, unregulated labour seems the most feasible way to make them readily available.
The ninth principle says that the child “shall not be admitted to employment before an appropriate minimum age; he shall in no case be caused or permitted to engage in any occupation or employment which would prejudice his health or education, or interfere with his physical, mental or moral development”.
It also says that the child “shall be protected against all forms of neglect, cruelty and exploitation. He shall not be the subject of traffic, in any form.”
The principles do not directly address the issue of sexual abuse, but it cannot be ignored as one of the areas of the worst and vilest acts against children.
Paedophiles—creatures I find so repugnant I cannot imagine how anyone could look past that deviancy—alongside traffickers and other sex offenders, prey on hapless children, mashing up their childhood and cursing them to live with horrible traumas.
People lament the diminishing presence of the church as a factor in the growing amorality in our societies (and I believe these complaints mainly emanate from Christian perspectives), but the church has been the bastion of these predatory behaviours.
Within families, incest, a sordid betrayal of trust, is too commonplace for us to pretend it is an isolated secret.
In our own locales, we know of the physical abuse, the neglect, the dysfunctional homes where the innocence of childhood is gutted without compunction. If you have never seen it first-hand, then you are living a charmed life; don’t ever forget that.
The right to “adequate nutrition, housing, recreation and medical services” is identified in No 4.
Principle 6 addresses the need for love and understanding; Principle 5 says that the “child who is physically, mentally or socially handicapped shall be given the special treatment, education and care required by his particular condition”.
Never mind the archaic wording from 1959 in these principles, the intent is clear. Shamefully (I never know if to call it shameful or shameless), our institutions fall down very badly in this regard.
We provide the free education in the early stages that Principle 7 advocates, but we do it with the scantiest of respect for its spirit: to develop abilities, individual judgement, and a sense of moral and social responsibility.
Like the rest of the world, we pay lip service to the ideals and principles which many nations became signatories to decades ago. Okay, so we need to be told what is the right thing to be done, but even when we agree to abide by the principles, we flout them with casual disregard.
Look at the current barbarity happening in the latest war of the old men (while it is directly labelled as an Israel-Palestine conflict, make no mistake it is the old men around the globe pulling the strings as they have always done).
Even as a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel had been agreed, attacks continued. It is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child, says the UN; women and children are two-thirds of the dead. Thousands of lives snuffed out, thousands more doomed to suffer for generations to come.
This is the direct consequence of the actions of global leaders who continue to treat the planet as a battlefield, while they send troops to fight for what is essentially a battle for economic spoils.
Witnessing the murders on that large scale can cause one to overlook the destruction happening in bits and pieces. We can lose sight of the fact that the children of abuse, the ones who survive, are the adults of tomorrow; scarred and traumatised, full of fear and anger.
We are already living in a time where young adults are so full of rage that they have cast aside the humanity that has been stolen from them during childhood.
This is a direct result of the damage done to youngsters when we ignore the fundamental idea that we should protect and nurture them—because it is our responsibility, and their right.
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