Home | UNICEF in Action | Highlights | Information Resources | Donations, Greeting Cards & Gifts | Press Centre | Voices of Youth | About UNICEF

UN adopts two protocols for children

Thursday, 25 May 2000: UNICEF heartily welcomed the adoption today of two UN protocols that it said will strengthen global standards for the protection of children.

The two protocols adopted by the UN General Assembly today are:

• The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography; and

• The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict.

The optional protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography ensures special attention to the criminalization of these serious violations of children's rights and emphasizes the importance of fostering increased public awareness and international co-operation in efforts to combat them.

Through their work to bring about the optional protocol on children in armed conflict, Governments as well as non-governmental organizations have helped signal a renewed international determination to reverse the growing and tragic victimization of hundreds of thousands of children who continue to be used to fight adult's wars.

It is up to individual Governments to freely decide whether and when to ratify the optional protocols. UNICEF strongly supports both and will encourage Governments to move swiftly to ratification.

"Organizations and individuals from all over the world have worked hard to bring these protocols to life," said Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF. "We view it as the responsibility of every government to embrace these high standards and adopt them swiftly."

Ms. Bellamy noted that more nations have adopted the CRC than any other international treaty. "The recognition and implementation of children's rights are the bedrock measure of our progress as a civilization," she said. "That's why I am so hopeful that these optional protocols will be universally adopted." She added that UNICEF hoped States would use the UN's upcoming Millennium Summit as an occasion to announce their firm commitment to the protocols.

With regard to the protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict, UNICEF pointed out that it requires States to make a declaration, upon ratification, regarding the age at which national forces will permit voluntary recruitment, as well as the steps that States will take to ensure that such recruitment in never forced or coerced. UNICEF said this clause was particularly important because, although the optional protocol sets 18 as the minimum age for compulsory recruitment, it does not establish age 18 as a minimum for voluntary recruitment.

For that reason, Ms. Bellamy called upon all states that ratify the optional protocol to "make strong statements unequivocal in their endorsement of 18 as the minimum age at which voluntary recruitment will be permitted."

UNICEF said it was encouraged by the commitments already made by many States to adopt legislation institutionalizing 18 as the standard minimum age for all forms of recruitment and involvement in military activities. UNICEF noted in particular that States parties to the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child have committed themselves to also apply 18 as the minimum age, and at the recent Lome Conference on the promotion and protection of the rights of children and women, ministers from West and Central Africa reaffirmed their commitment to retain the age of 18 as the minimum age for voluntary and non-voluntary recruitment into armed forces.

Home| UNICEF in Action | Highlights | Information Resources | Donations, Greeting Cards & Gifts | Press Centre | Voices of Youth | About UNICEF