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Children Right's Issues

    When the international community developed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, governments rushed to be seen as supporters of the idea that children have fundamental human rights, and need special care and protection in order to realize their potential. But in the decade that followed, all too many failed to live up to their commitments.

Children face torture, ill-treatment, and appalling conditions of detention on every continent. Some face death sentences. Countless thousands are killed and maimed in armed conflicts. Millions are forced by poverty or abuse to live on the streets. Millions more work at hazardous jobs or are victims of child trafficking and forced prostitution. Discriminatory attitudes and practices mean girl children suffer gender-specific abuses, such as female genital mutilation, and are particularly vulnerable to other forms of abuse, including rape.

On November 20, Universal Children’s Day, Amnesty International calls on the international community to take concrete steps to ensure that children’s rights -- the foundation for a solid human rights culture – are protected and promoted.

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UN Universal Children's Day: Forum Position
 

Participants to an international conference titled “The abuse of Children in Europe and beyond”, held in Brussels, have unanimously launched a strong, clear-cut appeal to democratic institutions, governments and civil society – to stop any and all abuses committed against children.

The conference was organized by the Church of Scientology.

The conference has also signed a declaration demanding that forced drugging of children on so-called behavioral disorders be ceased immediately due to the growing evidence of harmful effects, such as suicidal tendencies and aggression – a key theme of the expert discussion panel at the end of the Universal Children’s Day conference. The Conference’s Declaration is being forwarded to European national governments and otherwise spread and circulated through the human rights NGO network.

In September, the Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed concerns over a recently uncovered form of abuse that is increasingly widespread in developed countries. An estimated 17 million children are being prescribed mind-altering drugs for so-called behavioral disorders despite the growing evidence of their harmful effects, such as suicidal tendencies and aggression. Last August, the European Commission issued the strongest government warning to date against child antidepressant use, based on findings by the European Medicines Agency.

“We are introducing this new form of abuse on children because it is serious human rights issue,” said Martin Wightman, Human Rights Director of the European Office of the Church of Scientology International. “Children are being forced to take mind altering drugs stronger than some street drugs – all to “cure” a disease that is not based on scientific proof. The extensive damage such drugging can bring about is, in many ways, comparable to forcing a child to prostitution or to go to war or exploitative labor. Today’s conference fiercely opposed this abuse just as any other abuse on children.”

According to UNICEF reports there are:

• 246 million children engaged in exploitative child labor
• 140 million children who have never been to school
• 300,000 child soldiers, some as young as 8

 “The global community at times is morally outraged at the exploitation children endure,” said Dr Iftikhar Ayaz, Member of Minority Rights Group of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in his speech. “Yet child protection remedies regularly meet with resistance at all levels of society – from governments to community leaders to parents – because child abuse occurs mostly in private and is associated with criminality and corruption. In many cases, it is privately tolerated and publicly denied.”

“The medical sing of children’s behavior problems and the attempt to control their behavior with dangerous, psychiatric medication means that the new eugenics is already with us,” said conference participant Dr. Sami Timimi.

“As a scientist, a doctor, a father and a citizen,” continue Dr. Timimi, “I believe we have a moral obligation to do all we can to protect our children from suffering any further damage and I urge policy makers to carry out an urgent review of practice in the area of ADHD and the use of medication for control of children’s behavior and to put in place a moratorium on further prescribing of psychiatric medication to children until such an investigation is completed. To remain silent on this issue is to betray our children.”

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The General Assembly of the United Nations recommended in 1954 that all countries institute a Universal Children’s Day. The date of 20 November marks the day on which the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.

With 192 ratifying countries, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely endorsed international human rights treaty. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is the body responsible for monitoring implementation of the Convention by its State parties.

International Human Rights Day is marked every year on 10 December with activities led by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva , New York and at the field-presences.

The High Commissioner in her role as the international coordinator of the UN Human Rights Programmers , has focused Human Rights Day commemorative activities in 2005 on the issue of torture, one of the world's most profound human rights abuses.

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Source:
http://www.eupolitix.com/EN/ForumBriefs/200511/12e0f4fb-13fe-48a7-90aa-57c1a5ceaa63.htm

Children Rights section

Organizations Read more about organizations which care about children and provide every child the equal rights. Read about their work and more. Read More

People and Action A lot of people helped children to be happy and to feel safe. But there is still huge number of unprotected children. Read More

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