CROC - Introduction

Children around the world suffer appalling abuses. Too often, street children are killed or tortured by police. Children as young as seven or eight are recruited or kidnapped to serve as soldiers in military forces. Sometimes as young as six-years-old, children are forced to work under extremely difficult conditions, often as bonded laborers or in forced prostitution. They are imprisoned in inhumane conditions. Refugee children, often separated from their families, are vulnerable to exploitation, sexual abuse, or domestic violence. Orphaned and abandoned children are housed in appalling institutions where they suffer from cruelty and neglect; many die.
Source:
Human Rights Watch, The child's rights division

Introduction

Welcome

This unit of work, The Convention on the Rights of the Child, is a joint venture between the United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF Australia) and the Curriculum Support Directorate, New South Wales Department of Education and Training.

This Internet project is designed to enable secondary students to explore the contemporary developments of human rights for children. It incorporates a series of Internet activities with the following aims:

to increase students' knowledge of human rights for children
to focus students' attention on values, beliefs and attitudes about human rights for children
to develop students' understanding of individual and collective human rights for children
to explore laws which embody human rights for children and promote them in practice.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is about human rights for people under the age of 18. It was approved by the international community in 1989.

Human rights have been on the international agenda for many years. In 1948, for many reasons, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the international community.

In the years since the Declaration, the international community has learnt many things about human rights. Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a powerful instrument:

Special groups need special conventions so that their specific needs can be met. These include children, indigenous peoples and women.
Many people do not promote and protect human rights; in fact they often abuse them.
There needs to be international and national laws that promote and protect human rights. Because people do not truly understand the human rights of children, evidence shows that in many countries the laws are not adequate. For the Convention to be influential there needs to be effective:
- monitoring of human rights abuses and issues
- effective punishments for the perpetrators, such as the European Court of Human Rights
- effective mechanisms to stop the abuses
- ownership by all people of the Convention.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely supported international treaty because nations, organisations and individuals realise that the future of humanity is in the hands of our children.

Here are some facts for you to consider:

Forty million children live on the streets of the world's cities; in 1988, 8,000,000 of them were on the streets of Sao Paolo, Brazil (population 32,000,000).
The average age of the homeless in the USA is 9.
Twelve million children a year die before reaching 5, mostly from preventable diseases.
Three US children die every day as a result of abuse or neglect.
A child born in New York today is less likely to live to 5 than a child born in Shanghai.
30% of children in developing countries do not complete 4 years of schooling.
20% of all America's children live below the poverty line; 43.8% of America's black children live below the poverty line. In 1979, 1 in 10 children in the UK lived below the poverty line; in 1996, it was 1 in 3.
A gun takes the life of a child every 2 hours in the USA; 50,000 children were killed by firearms between 1979 and 1991, the same number as United States' casualties in the Vietnam War.
In Liberia, children made up a quarter of all civil war combatants.
Children are tortured by the authorities in 11 countries.
There are between 100 million and 200 million child labourers world-wide
In Angola, 7% of children had fired at somebody in 1995.
In Sarajevo, 1 in 4 children have been wounded.
In Rwanda, 114,000 children had been separated from their families by the end of 1994.
2,800 children were murdered in Columbia in 1991.
85% of US child prostitutes have previously suffered rape, incest or abuse.
1,000,000 children work in the Asian sex trade.
1,000,000 children world-wide have been born HIV-positive.
Children are the victims of summary execution in 32 countries.
6,042 children are arrested every day in the USA.
70% of Indonesia's under 5s are malnourished according to a local health official.
4,000 children in the USA will be murdered by their parents this year (1998).
1.3 million US children run away from violence or rape every year.
40% of murdered children were in the legal custody of social services at the time.
2,000,000 girls between 4 and 12 undergo genital mutilation every year.
At least 1,000,000 children a year are left motherless by death in childbirth.
12% of 15-year-olds in the industrialised world smoke cigarettes every day.

Source: Children's rights across the world (BOES)

Some facts about Indigenous Australian children:

Infant mortality rates

Indigenous babies: 21.7 / 1000
Non-Indigenous babies: 9.7 / 1000

Mortality rates between ages of 15-34

Indigenous: 15.3%
Non-Indigenous: 3.5%

Literacy rates

Indigenous students who meet literacy standards: 20%
Non-Indigenous students who meet literacy standards: 70%

Source: Sydney Morning Herald May 27, 2000

The Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises statistics like these and aims to eradicate them. They are not statistics that reflect crimes against humanity in some one else's country. The crimes happen in all countries including yours.

All humans are the same. We want love and acceptance. The Convention gives us a framework to build the necessary love and acceptance. With a change to a positive life for all, we all benefit. Imagine a world where each child, including you, reaches his or her full potential without fear.

UNICEF works to prevent these threats to children and to give all children a good start in life. To do this, UNICEF focuses on:

Immunisation
UNICEF works to immunise children against the major killer diseases. Fighting the deadly dehydration that is caused by diarrhoea, is easily remedied by giving the child a mixture of salt, sugar and water (called Oral Rehydration Therapy). By promoting breastfeeding, mothers learn that breast milk is the best source of nourishment and it protects babies by building their immune system.

Case study of UNICEF Australia work in immunisation in East Timor

Water and Sanitation
Over 4 million young children die every year from diseases associated with unsafe water. UNICEF cooperates with governments to install tubewells, pumps and other sources of water.

Safe Motherhood
More than 500,000 women die each year from causes relating to pregnancy and childbirth. These risks can be reduced, as they have been in industrialised countries, where a woman faces only a 1 in 3,600 chance of dying in childbirth. UNICEF promotes safe motherhood by training community health workers and midwives to reduce this appalling toll.

Health
Hundreds of thousands of children suffer blindness through Vitamin A deficiency. UNICEF helps countries remedy this easily preventable health problem by informing people about the need to eat fruits and vegetables rich in the vitamin and distributing vitamin A capsules to children at risk.

Education
Education is the key to literacy and the basis for all progress for individuals. Yet millions of children never go to school. UNICEF works to train teachers and to make primary education free and compulsory for every child.

Children and Conflict
UNICEF meets the needs of children and women affected by emergencies - wars, civil strife and natural calamities - supplying food, medicine and clean water.

Source: UNICEF Australia

To find out more about the Convention and what nations, groups and individuals are doing to support and promote it, there are a number of sections for you to explore. It is advised that you complete the Introductory activity first. Once you have completed the activities design an Internet site about the Convention. It will help educate many more people and this is important if we want a world where equal rights, equal opportunity and justice are for all.

Click here to register for the Convention on the Rights of the Child unit.

Other One World projects:

Other Human Rights Sites:

One world,
many democracies:
Human Rights

Explore your human rights
through Internet activities

International Human Rights Day
on ABC Online

Universal Rights Network

This unit of work is a joint venture between UNICEF Australia and the Curriculum Support Directorate, NSW Department of Education and Training.