Children's Rights

Editor: Justin Healey
ISBN 978 1 920801 07 6
Year 2004

Price: $19.95

  

Children's Rights
Volume 198, Issues in Society

Australia, like every country in the world save two, has signed and ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. What are the major deprivations and hardships experienced by the world’s children, particularly those in developing countries, and what is being done to protect their rights? Australia has also come under international scrutiny for the treatment of child asylum seekers, the use of mandatory sentencing, and the problems faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. This book examines the Convention and how it is applied to improving the state of the world’s children, and also looks at children’s rights in Australia, particularly in relation to parents’ rights, rights at school, general legal rights, and the physical punishment of children.

Chapter 1  Convention on the Rights of the Child
The Convention on the Rights of the Child; A summary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child; The state of the world’s children; Child participation: myth and reality; Children around the world suffer appalling abuses; Children and sexual exploitation; Children and armed conflict; Children and labour; Children and health; Focus on child abuse and exploitation.

Chapter 2  Children’s Rights in Australia
Children’s rights: what are they?; What a CROC!; Fact and fiction: the Convention on the Rights of the Child; Position statements on children’s rights in Australia; The rights of children; Fair go – your rights at school; Including children and young people; Parents’ rights; Look ... no hands; Research sparks inquiry into physical punishment of children; Shaping children’s behaviour.

Glossary; Facts and Figures; Additional Resources; Index



FAST FACTS from this volume
  • The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights – civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights. Two Optional Protocols, on the involvement of children in armed conflict and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, were adopted to strengthen the provisions of the Convention in these areas. They entered into force, respectively on 12 February and 18 January 2002.
  • The underlying values – or “guiding principles” – of the Convention guide the way each right is fulfilled and respected and serve as a constant reference for the implementation and monitoring of children’s rights. The Convention’s four guiding principles are: Non-discrimination (article 2); Best interests of the child (article 3); Survival and development (article 6); and Participation (article 12).
  • 100 million children live on the streets of the world’s cities, including 40 million in Latin America alone. More than 25,000 children in Australia are homeless.
  • The United Nations Human Rights Commission has reported that globally approximately 10 million children are regularly engaged in sex for money. Furthermore, UNICEF estimates that every year at least one million children, most of them girls, become prostitutes. More than 300,000 children in the United States work in the sex trade.
  • Vulnerable children – almost always from poor, marginalised or Indigenous or ethnic minority families – are often coerced, kidnapped, forced, or conned into working as prostitutes. Many children are then trafficked between countries to support either a local or an international sex tourism market.
  • In the last decade, an estimated two million children have been killed in armed conflict, many of them as a result of the 100 million landmines laid in 64 countries.
  • A total of roughly four to five million children have been seriously injured or permanently disabled as a result of their experience in war.
  • More than 12 million children have been left homeless because of war.
  • Nobody knows for sure the extent of child labour. Countries protect their reputations by not keeping those sorts of statistics. However, the International Labour Organisation estimates that 120 million children aged 5 to 14 work full-time and a further 130 million work part-time. However, the figure may be as high as 500 million when including the numbers of children doing domestic work.
  • Not all forms of labour exploit children. In the majority of cases, children work directly for their families – in the home, in the fields or on the streets – simply to ensure that they can survive. However, much child labour is exploitative. Many children are forced into dangerous or grossly underpaid work in factories, plantations or domestic service. Children are also sold into prostitution or bonded labour, where they work to pay off debts incurred by their parents or grandparents. The rate of repayment is so low that bonded labour becomes child slavery.
  • 12 million children a year die before reaching five years of age, mostly from malnutrition and preventable diseases – a proportion unmatched since the Black Death ravaged Europe in the 14th century.
  • Malnutrition is a factor in the death of over 6 million children in developing countries each year.
  • Over 200 million children under the age of five in developing countries are malnourished.
  • In Australia the mortality rates for Indigenous children are up to five times greater than for other Australian children.
  • Globally, nearly 11 million children die before their fifth birthday, overwhelmingly from causes that are preventable and treatable. Tens of millions of children suffer from abuse and violence each year.
  • In the last decade, millions of children have died as a result of conflicts. Over the same period, 6 million have been injured or disabled in wars.
  • An estimated 300,000 children are being used as child soldiers, including girls, who are used as sex slaves and exposed to diseases such as HIV.
  • Over 180 million children are engaged in hazardous child labour.
  • An estimated 100 million girls and women have endured genital mutilation, usually carried out in childhood or adolescence.