However, for countless children around the world, these promises have been broken. The armed conflicts that rage in all quarters of the world have produced appalling abuses of children’s rights. Hundreds of thousands of children have been pressed into service as soldiers. Millions have become refugees – displaced from their homes, often separated from their families; their future and safety uncertain.
Children living outside war zones may also be subjected to routine violence. Street children on every continent endure harassment and physical abuse by police. Even schools, intended to promote the healthy development of children, may be the site of abuse against children. In some countries, the use of corporal punishment by teachers has resulted in injury and even death. In others, gay and lesbian students endure harassment and violence by their peers, while school authorities fail to intervene.
Millions of children have no access to education, work long hours under hazardous conditions, or languish in orphanages or detention centers where they endure inhumane conditions and daily assaults on their dignity, in violation of the rights guaranteed to them under the convention.
The decade since the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child has been marked by some significant advances on behalf of children. Many countries have used the convention as the basis to revise domestic legislation and improve protections for children, or have appointed special ombudspersons or envoys for children. As the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the body that monitors compliance of states parties to the convention, has evaluated country reports under the convention, it has developed new standards of protection and pressed governments for specific reforms.
A 1996 United Nations report on the impact of armed conflict on children raised international concern about the plight of children in war, prompting varied initiatives to end the use of child soldiers and other war-time abuses. The number of children killed every year by antipersonnel mines has dropped in the wake of massive efforts to end the use of the weapon and the adoption of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. The adoption of the statute for the International Criminal Court holds out the hope of ending the impunity of those who recruit children under the age of fifteen in armed conflicts and target schools for attack.
However, the following pages illustrate the troubling extent to which the international community has failed children. The issues selected for attention here are not exhaustive, but represent those which have been the focus of Human Rights Watch investigation and advocacy over the past half-decade.
The tenth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child marks an important milestone. The rights of children are recognized as never before. But it also poses a challenge: for governments and civil society to take stronger action to implement its provisions, strengthen protections, and fulfill the promises made to the children of the world.
 |
| United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights contains relevant international human rights treaties |