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Children's rights and the UN treaty bodies - an analysis

UN human rights treaties and the bodies that monitor them are the best hope we have of securing children’s rights globally. But while children, like adults, enjoy all the rights enshrined in these treaties - not only those that are child-specific - the ways in which they apply to children are often overlooked, both by children’s rights advocates and the UN mechanisms themselves.

We want to press for the permanent presence of children's rights across all UN human rights mechanisms. This means ensuring children’s rights are addressed with the same consistency and rigour as adults’ rights.

With this in mind, in 2011 CRIN launched the Children’s Rights Wiki, an online tool which brings together all information about children’s rights country by country with the aim of identifying persistent violations of children’s rights in a given country, as raised by all UN human rights mechanisms, with the eventual goal of matching them with avenues of redress.

We have now completed the first phase of our analysis of this information. This looks at how children’s rights are addressed in the work of the committees that monitor the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These treaties recognise the most diverse and comprehensive human rights and fundamental freedoms.

This analysis reveals the children’s rights violations most frequently raised by the two UN committees, as well as gaps in their questioning of States, and in our own work as children's rights advocates, which UN committees rely on to bring issues to their attention.

We hope this work, which looks at general comments and concluding observations, will encourage the committees to address all areas of children’s rights, and help advocates strengthen their reporting on children’s rights issues.

Findings

As a general observation, we noted that violations of children’s rights are addressed throughout the concluding observations and general comments of the two committees. States are urged to take action on a wide range of issues facing children: from child labour and youth unemployment; food insecurity; harmful traditional practices; the inadequate provision of social security benefits and corporal punishment in all settings to discrimination against minority children; child trafficking and medical testing on children.

Areas that deserve greater scrutiny are listed below.

UN Human Rights Committee

• Generally, violations of children’s protection rights, for example articles 7 (freedom from torture), 8 (freedom from slavery and servitude) and 10 (right of detained persons to humane treatment), are given more attention than violations of their civil rights.

• Age discrimination, including in access to remedies, is off the radar. Recommendations to give children access to legal representation have been delivered to only four States: Spain, Belize, Tajikistan and Argentina.

• Discrimination against girls is consistently addressed, but discrimination facing other groups of children, including boys (for instance, in some countries, boys, but not girls, can be sentenced to corporal punishment), and children who identify as transgender, is nowhere in sight.

• Under article 7 (freedom from torture), the Committee has urged action from States on a comprehensive range of issues including corporal punishment in all settings, sexual violence in war zones (Democratic Republic of Congo), medical testing on children (Netherlands), and detention of children seeking asylum in poor conditions (Latvia). However the Committee has not addressed life imprisonment of children as a violation of the prohibition on torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.

• Children are increasingly articulating their voices in protest movements across the world (and some are leading them), yet freedom of expression for children has garnered mere mentions in the Committee's recommendations to three States (Turkey, Ukraine, Lithuania).

• General Comment 22 on article 18 on the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion reaffirms parents' freedom to educate children in accordance with their own beliefs but fails to set higher standards for children and shift this focus from the ‘parental right’ to choose children’s religion to children’s right to follow their own beliefs under parental guidance in accordance with the child’s evolving capacities.

• Children experience particular barriers to enjoying their right to peaceful assembly and freedom of association, for instance because of status offences and a lack of adequate spaces to form or join associations, and the existence of laws which prohibit them from forming and joining associations.

• The need to react to new challenges of balancing children’s enjoyment of their right to privacy and their right to be protected, such as those which emerge with online surveillance measures (to date, only France has received a recommendation on children’s right to privacy).

• In light of the recent attempt by some States to restrict the definition of the family, the Committee is well placed to remind States to protect the rights of individuals within the family, including from violations of their rights by other family members and to accept the reality that various forms of families exist.

Read the full analysis

Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

• The Committee has repeatedly called on States to step up efforts to end all forms of abuse and exploitation of children in the labour market. It has, however, rarely highlighted the need to guarantee all aspects of article 7 for children, including just and favourable conditions of work, for instance by establishing a minimum age of admission into employment, ensuring regulation of working hours and conditions, and applying appropriate penalties and other sanctions in cases of non-compliance.

• There is a need to highlight child workers’ right to form and join trade unions to defend themselves against economic exploitation at work, participate in legal reform, and represent their interests with employers under article 8 (right to form and join trade unions).

• The Committee has raised a number of violations of article 9 (right to social security) relating to inadequate or lack of provision of social security benefits for the most disadvantaged, access to benefits for certain groups such as migrant children (Argentina) and children with disabilities (Turkmenistan), the high number of children living below the poverty line as a result of scant social security payments (Germany) and effective implementation of social protection laws (Montenegro). However, the Committee could take a stronger position regarding the austerity measures that some countries have recently introduced and their disproportionate impact on children.

• The Committee has urged action from States on a broad range of issues under article 12 (right to health) but rarely reminds States that children are entitled to be actively involved in their own health care from the earliest possible age. Other controversial issues such as children’s access to drug treatment and harm reduction services and non-therapeutic male circumcision performed as a religious or cultural practice have yet to be addressed.

Read the full analysis

NEWS IN BRIEF

Armed conflict

MYANMAR: Parliament welcomes signing of optional protocol on child soldiers

SOUTH SUDAN: Children raped and abducted during ‘incredibly violent’ civil war                           

Sexual abuse

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: Government to investigate accusations its peacekeepers raped a child in the Central African Republic

VATICAN: Jozef Wesolowski, former diplomat accused of child sex abuse, found dead ahead of trail

CHINA: Government replaces underage sex law, adds death penalty for those found to have raped a child

Discrimination against children with disabilities

UNITED KINGDOM: Ofsted slams residential home for locking up disabled children

RUSSIA: Human rights watch report shows how children with disabilities face discrimination
 

Digital rights

PRIVACY: LGBT Campaigners worry that Windows 10’s activity reports will could be ‘outing’ children to their parents

Juvenile justice

UNITED KINGDOM: Scottish Law Commission recommends raising minimum age of criminal responsibility from 8 to 12

UNITED STATES: Teenager sentenced to  11 years in prison for tweeting support for IS

ISRAEL: U.N. warns Israel that law changes could worsen human rights

Children seeking asylum

GREECE: UN sets up ‘child-friendly’ migrant space near border with former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

AUSTRALIA: All children should be removed from Nauru detention centre, Senate inquiry finds

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ACCESS TO JUSTICE FOR CHILDREN IN LIBERIA

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) depends on national law for implementation in Liberia, thus it does not take precedence over national law. In the case of inconsistencies between national law and CRC norms, as in the cases of the minimum legal age of marriage and certain issues related to adoption and juvenile justice, national law prevails over the CRC. The CRC has not been directly incorporated in national law. However, many of its provisions have been enshrined in subject-specific legislation. The CRC cannot be directly enforced in the courts. Instead, the CRC’s rights and guarantees can only be enforced through national law. In civil cases, anyone under the age of 21 (“infants”) is permitted to sue only through a representative. If a child complainant classifies as an indigent person, he or she is provided with an attorney by the court and becomes entitled to a free transcript of the record for an appeal.

Read the full report on access to justice for children in Liberia.

This report is part of CRIN's access to justice for children project, looking at the status of the CRC in national law, the status of children involved in legal proceedings, the legal means to challenge violations of children’s rights and the practical considerations involved in challenging violations.

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UPCOMING EVENTS

Child detention: Preventing Detention of Children from the Northern Triangle
Organisation:  Global Campaign to End Child Detention
Date: 1 - 30 September
Location: Mexico City, Mexico

Call for papers: Sixth Int'l Human Rights Education Conference - 'Translating Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms to Today’s World'
Organisations: HREA and University College Roosevelt 
Submission deadline: 6 September 2015
Dates: 17-19 December 2015
Location: Middelburg, Netherlands

Street children: Street Children United Summit
Organisation: Street Children United
Date: 7 - 11 September
Location: London

Child detention: Exhibit at the UN Human Rights Council
Organisation: Global Campaign to End Child Detention
Date: 7- 18 September
Location: Palais des Nations, Switzerland

Migrant workers: Panel Discussion on Children of Migrant Workers
Organisation: UN Committee on Migrant Workers and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Date: 8 September
Location: Palais des Nations, Switzerland

Africa: Global Child Forum on Southern Africa
Organisation: Global Child Forum et al
Date: 8 September 2015
Location: Pretoria, South Africa

Registration deadline: Cross-border child protection: Legal and social perspectives
Organisation: The International Social Service
Date: Registration before 23 September, conference between 21 and 23 October
Location: Geneva

Call for submissions: Global Summit on Childhood
Organisation: Association for Childhood Education International
Submission deadline: 28 September 2015.
Location: N/A

Juvenile justice: Online training course on ‘Alternatives to Detention for Young Offenders’ 
Organisation: International School for Juvenile Justice 
Course dates: 1 October 2015 (lasts three months) 
Location: Online 

Child abuse: European Regional Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect
Organisation: International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect
Dates: 27-30 September 2015
Location: Bucharest, Romania

Health: Conference on child rights and sight
Organisation:  Distressed Children & Infants International
Dates: 24 October 2015
Location: New Haven, United States

Asia Pacific: 10th Asian Pacific Regional Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect
Organisation: International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect
Dates: 25-28 October 2015
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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EMPLOYMENT

CRIN: Legal Translation Intern
Application deadline: Rolling deadline
Location: Flexible, home-based 

CRIN: Legal research internships (Arabic-speaking)
Application deadline: Rolling deadline
Location: London, United Kingdom

CRIN: Communications Intern (French-speaking)
Application deadline: Rolling deadline
Location: Flexible, home-based 

UN Children's Fund: Treaty Body Resource Kit, Consultancy
Application deadline: 8 September
Location: Flexible

THE LAST WORD

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