China and the Convention on the Rights of the ChildSpecial Report by Mr. Frankie Chen, UNICEF China The year 2009 marks the twentieth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. China has been a supporter of the Convention, the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, since the very beginning. In 1989, China co-sponsored the draft resolution that led to the adoption of the Convention by the UN General Assembly during its forty-fourth session. China signed the Convention on 29 August 1990 and ratified it on 2 March 1992. Also in 1992, China launched a National Programme of Action for Child Development (1992–2000), the country's first national action plan to address the specific needs of children. Drawing upon the CRC and the 1990 UN World Summit for Children, China's National Programme of Action contained children's development projects with specific targets, as well as implementation plans at the central, provincial, prefectural and county levels. The Convention has led to the promotion and protection of a wide range of child rights in China and the other 192 States Parties that have ratified it. As the Government of China noted in its Initial Report, which it submitted to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 1995, "The Convention is a universally applicable standard drawn up by the international community for the protection of children's rights, and the Chinese Government regards its assumption and discharge of obligations under the Convention as factors contributing to the protection of children in China." China's ratification of the Convention has led to the development of an increasingly strong body of domestic legislation to help codify and standardize state protection of children. In order to implement the Convention, China has passed a series of legislative and administrative measures, including the Law on Adoption (1992), the Law on the Protection of Minors (1992), the Law on Maternal and Infant Health Care (1994), the Law on Compulsory Education (1995) and the Labour Law (1995). And as a result of the observations made by the Committee in response to its Initial Report, China subsequently amended the Criminal Law (amended 1997), the Criminal Procedure Law (amended 1997), the Law on Adoption (amended 1999), the Marriage Law (amended 2001) and other laws with provisions that concern the rights and interests of children. The Convention has led to more than a change in legislation. During the past two decades, child survival and development in China have steadily improved. For example, included among the 49 targets China set for itself in the 1992 National Programme of Action were lowering infant and under-five mortality rates, lowering the malnutrition rate of children, maintaining the rate of coverage of planned immunization, universalizing basic education, protecting children in hardship and protecting children from HIV/AIDS. By the end of 2000, China had attained nearly all of the goals it had set for itself when it ratified the Convention. Since the turn of the millennium, both China and the world have worked to further promote and protect the rights of children. In 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted two optional protocols to the CRC: the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography and the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict. China has ratified both Optional Protocols, in 2002 and 2008 respectively. In 2001, China adopted the second National Programme of Action for Child Development (2001–2010) and in 2003, it submitted its Second Report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. Over the last two decades, China's children have benefited from lower material deprivation and better access to quality health care and education. According to the latest UN inter-agency statistics, the under-five mortality rate was reduced by 51 per cent between 1990 and 2007. An estimated 94 per cent of infants receive routine immunization. Meanwhile, the economic transformation that has taken place in China during the last two decades, in which GDP per capita has grown at an average annual rate of 9 per cent, has lifted more than half a billion people out of absolute poverty. However, economic advances in China have been uneven, exacerbating disparities among diverse geographical and income groups. These disparities are compounded by limited access to quality health services for those living in poor and rural areas, as well as for the country's estimated 150 million internal migrants. Infant mortality rates, for example, are almost five times higher in the most impoverished areas than in the wealthiest provinces. In the years ahead, China faces the challenge of consolidating its gains in child rights and ensuring that growth is accompanied by diminishing disparities. China will submit its third report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2010. As with previous reports, next year's report will serve to monitor the situation of children, document progress and identify further areas of improvement. Investing in child rights in line with the principles of the Convention of the Rights of the Child is among the surest ways to ensure that China's economic and social progress is both consolidated and deepened in the years to come.
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