Follow-up: CRC - A Cornerstone
At the Special Session there was consensus that governments,
NGOs and children and adolescents themselves, in addition
to other actors, will all have a key role to play to ensure
that the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) remains
the cornerstone for all actions for, and with, children and
adolescents.
Governments
At the General Assembly, many delegates urged that actions
for children be firmly rooted in and framed by the Convention
and its Optional Protocols.
Delegates from New Zealand, for example, urged that all strive
to implement the Convention "with the aid of the Platform
of Action adopted by this Special Session." Delegates
from Papua New Guinea noted that the Convention implies not
only the rights of children but also the obligation of adults
towards succeeding generations.
Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights, hailed the Convention, ratified by 191 States, as
one of the great success stories of multilateral diplomacy
and of the human rights movement. She also noted that a human
rights approach to the well-being of children required States
to make every effort to eliminate all forms of discrimination
against children and to respond effectively to the challenge
of HIV/AIDS.
Read the highlights of the General
Assembly debate especially the section on Implementing
the CRC of the document.
NGOs
The Convention was also a central and unifying theme among
most NGOs. It entered nearly every discussion in the NGO plenaries
and other events and throughout the strong, mobilizing work
of the Child Rights Caucus.
Formed in early 2000, the Caucus is a group of more than
100 national and international NGOs from around the world
committed to proactively protecting and promoting the human
rights of children. The Caucus served as a lobby group pressing
for a strong rights-based focus to the Special Session and
its outcome document, and felt that both could have placed
a stronger emphasis on fulfilling the rights of children.
The group prepared several versions of an alternative outcome
document called 'A Children's Rights Agenda for the Coming
Decade'.
See also the website of the Child
Rights Information Network (CRIN) , a global network of
more than 1,100 organizations in over 100 countries, a majority
of them NGOs, which are active in the area of child rights.
See also Child
Rights and national plans of action in the NGO Participation
section of this website.
Children
Both at the Children's Forum and the Special Session, children
insisted that their rights be respected, protected and fulfilled.
They often referred to the Convention when they urged that
decisive action be taken to make 'A World Fit for Children',
where children could actively participate in decision-making.
"For every day that we're here, there are children dying,
there are children being exploited, and there are children
whose rights are being violated."
- Laura Kerstin Hannant, 16, Canada
For more information on the Convention on the Rights of the
Child, see Child
rights in action.
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