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Harnessing Energies to Make Children's Rights a Reality The Hon. Dr. Peter Nygh Memorial Lecture
It is a great pleasure to return to Cape Town to participate in the Fourth World Congress on Family Law and Children’s Rights. I am proud of my association with the World Congress, having served as Patron of the Third Congress which was held in Bath, England in 2001. I was glad to accept the invitation to deliver the Dr. Peter Nygh Memorial Lecture to help open this event – for three reasons. First, to honour the memory of Peter Nygh who was a distinguished academic, specialising in private international law, then a judge of the family court in Australia, and who served with great dedication as Director of Studies for the World Congress. Second, because of your particular focus this year on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child – the most ratified international human rights instrument, which, as you know, marks in 2005 the 15th anniversary of its entry into force. And last, but by no means least, because my son lives and works here in Cape Town. How could a mother pass up any chance to visit her child?! The title I have chosen for my remarks today is “Harnessing Energies to make Children's Rights a Reality”. It sums up for me the challenges in the years ahead – mobilizing popular opinion, political will, and the public and private resources required to turn the legal commitments which governments have made under the Convention into realities in the lives of children everywhere. We all know our collective record to date. As UNICEF’s Annual Report for 2005 titled “Childhood Under Threat” so starkly puts it: “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that we, the adults of the world…are failing the children of today.” We only need to reflect for a moment on some of the report’s statistics – many of which we know well - to remind ourselves just how badly we continue to fail. Around 29,000 children under five die every day from causes that are easily prevented, such as diarrhoeal dehydration, acute respiratory infections, measles and malaria. That’s a silent tsunami every five days, seventy relentless tsunamis each year. In the developing world, more than one in three children lacks adequate shelter, one in five goes without safe water, and one in seven has no access whatsoever to essential health services. Over 16 per cent of children under five lack adequate nutrition and 13 per cent of all children – over 100 million - have never been to school. On top of these staggering statistics relating to child poverty, consider as well that since 1990, more than 45 percent of the 3.6 million people killed in conflicts around the world have been children. UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children Report rightly focuses much of its attention on the situation of young people in developing countries and countries experiencing violent conflict. But we must not forget that the circumstances facing many children in the richer nations show worrying trends as well. For example, UNICEF reports that over the latest ten-year period for which comparable data are available, the proportion of children living in poverty has actually gone up in 17 out of 24 OECD countries. Something UNICEF doesn’t address directly in its study of OECD countries, but which many of you from these nations will have direct knowledge of, is the struggle of children who have been abused and neglected. Too many children face terrible violence and abuse in the home, are abandoned, and in some cases, suffer in legal and social welfare programs that, despite good intentions, do not ensure that their best interests are protected. The numbers of these children are more difficult to track, but we know they are significant – we are failing them as well. The bottom line is that for hundreds of millions of children today from “developed” and “developing” countries alike, the promise of childhood affirmed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child remains only that – a promise. And as many of you who work directly with children and their families know all too well, their deprivation is part of a vicious cycle that spans many generations. Harnessing energies for further progress It is painfully clear that the 15th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child isn’t a time for celebration. Instead, let us make it a time to generate new strategies, new energies and new commitments to action for children. And let us be determined to ensure that the commitments governments have made in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the CRC, are brought directly to the decision tables of other important events and initiatives taking place during 2005 such as the UK/G8 focus on Africa, the review of progress, or lack thereof, towards the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals, the MDGs, by 2015, the aims of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and the efforts to achieve a breakthrough for the interests of developing countries at the WTO Ministerial meeting in Hong Kong. The Millennium Project report, published in January, contains a number of practical “Quick Wins” relating to the MDGs and children:
We need to harness public-private partnerships – governments, business and local groups working with children - to accelerate implementation of these quick wins. The 2005 Report of the Global Governance Initiative of the World Economic Forum calls on the private sector to play a much greater role. The new project I have been developing since leaving the UN – Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative – is built around the conviction that the tools of human rights can and should be used by economic and development policymakers, by business leaders, by parliamentarians and by other groups to develop more equitable and more effective responses to real world problems. We have placed particular emphasis on galvanizing different sectors to contribute to ongoing efforts that improve the health of women and girls. We are working with a number of networks and organizations to further this objective. For example, we are partnering with the Council of Women World Leaders - of which I currently serve as Chair – in supporting the development of a network of women ministers of health from around the world. We have joined with the Female Health Company and the UNAIDS Coalition on Women and AIDS to form the “Business Women’s Initiative Against HIV/AIDS” (BWI), a network of business leaders that is working to provide more women and girls with prevention, care and treatment. And with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we have embarked on a three year project to help African parliamentarians to effectively tackle women’s and girl’s health in Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana, and Namibia. This initiative is a collaborative effort with the International Center for Research on Women, the Centre for the Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria, European Parliamentarians for Africa and the International Community of Women Living with AIDS. Through the combined research and advocacy abilities of the consortium, this multiyear effort will build the capacity of parliamentarians to increase women’s and girl’s access to health care. I mention these initiatives because they demonstrate what I believe is a central component of the strategies needed to protect child rights in the years ahead – the involvement of multiple actors, with different skills and organizational capacities, in partnerships around the common aim of realizing rights for all. A powerful energy that needs to be harnessed more effectively on behalf of children is the women’s movement worldwide. I was glad to help co-convene, together with Marian Wright Edelman, Graca Machel and others, a meeting of women leaders in Bellagio in February 2004. At that meeting, a Global Women’s Action Network for Children was created which will focus on two of the Millennium goals: reducing maternal mortality and improving girls’ access to education. More recently I have accepted an invitation from Yassine Fall to serve on the Steering Committee of the African Women’s Millennium Initiative for fighting Poverty through Gender Equality (AWOMI), and I hope to encourage a strong working link between these two different networks of women leaders. As a member of the Board of the Vaccine Fund GAVI, working under the leadership of Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel, I have seen first hand how much more can be done for the immunization of children through the combined efforts of all involved. Now the Vaccine Fund/GAVI is poised to increase dramatically the funding available for vaccines and immunization through becoming a pilot project for the proposed International Finance Facility. Instead of the IFF being an abstract funding concept, which is difficult to explain, it can become synonymous with a healthy smiling child. A further source of energy for children here in South Africa is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has joined Plan International in a global campaign for birth registration. This was an issue often raised to me when I met local groups as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and it is of course a fundamental human rights issue. It is shocking that every year the births of some 48 million children go unrecorded. As a result they are often denied access to health care and education, and more prone to trafficking and other abuse. The CRC and the Work of the Committee on the Rights of the Child So, as we remind ourselves again of the state of the world’s children, 15 years after the Convention came into force, we must ask – how do we scale up the positive steps that have been taken over the past decade? How do we infuse a sense of renewed energy and commitment to a “first call for children” which is more than an empty promise? As the 2005 State of the World’s Children report makes clear, the knowledge, money, technology, strategies and people needed to make a difference are all available in abundance. What has been missing, however, is a laser like focus on prioritizing the rights of children at every level. Our task is to connect these wider energies to the rights based approach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child with a laser like focus. It is important that we use the occasion of this World Congress to draw lessons from the experience of countries from different regions and different stages of economic and social development in implementing the Convention at national level. I am pleased that a number of your sessions over the coming days will be looking at how precisely the Convention has impacted on legislation and policies concerning children in different national settings. And because the Convention is an international instrument, it is important to reflect as well on the work of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the expert body responsible for reviewing the performance of states parties to the CRC in measuring up to their treaty obligations. Allow me to say a few words on these points from my own experience. Looking back on my five years as High Commissioner, during which I had a great deal of contact with the members and work of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and looking more broadly over the past 15 years from the perspective of someone who spent many years as a practicing lawyer, what is striking to me is the significant progress the Committee has made during this time in developing a solid body of jurisprudence based on the Convention. Since it began its work in 1990, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has considered over 250 country reports submitted by 180 States. As those of you who are familiar with the work of the UN human rights mechanisms will know, the individual country recommendations and General Comments, which provide interpretation on specific issues addressed in the CRC, are the main working tools of the Committee. The Committee’s jurisprudence over its first 15 years has addressed a broad range of concerns, from the child’s right to identity to the participation rights of children, from corporal punishment to harmful traditional practices, from adoption and alternative care to the rights of children with disabilities. These interpretative advances by the Committee have been critical to the efforts of local and national activists, lawyers and policy makers in countries around the world to increase knowledge of and constituencies for child rights issues. I saw for myself in many of the countries I visited as High Commissioner how the reporting and monitoring obligations under the Convention helped to bring together groups from a wide range of backgrounds with diverse working methods and issues of concern who hadn’t worked together before, but were joining forces because of a shared concern for the wellbeing of children. Today there are national child rights coalitions in over 100 countries who report to the Committee in Geneva and follow-up its recommendations after individual country reports are considered. What I find most encouraging is that these national movements on child rights issues increasingly include professionals from a range of fields – teachers, doctors, lawyers, social workers, as well as extensive youth group networks. In addition to providing a rallying point for child issues at national level, the Committee’s jurisprudence also provides a valuable reference point for national legislators as they develop and reform policies relating to children and for national courts as they deal with specific cases. We need to keep in mind the value of the interactions between international processes within the UN human rights system and local and national coalitions seeking improvements in the lives of children. A key part of our work in the years ahead should be to demonstrate the value of these interactions to more countries and strengthen their ability to influence policy and practice at national level. We must also acknowledge that a number of significant obstacles remain in making the Convention and its monitoring mechanism effective tools in protecting the rights of children. It is important to note that many of the points I will mention briefly here apply not just to the CRC but to the wider UN human rights treaty system as well. The first point relates to the capacity problems of the system. Today 192 governments are obligated under the Convention to report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child once every five years. Many states are currently behind schedule in their reporting obligations. Yet the fact is that the Committee and its secretariat can’t adequately absorb and deal with the current level of incoming reports. With the new additional reporting processes under the two Optional Protocols to the Convention, it is expected that the existing backlog of reports submitted for consideration by the Committee will increase even more in the coming years. Last year the UN General Assembly agreed that during 2006 the Committee would be permitted to work in two parallel chambers in order to increase its capacity to a level where it would be able to review 48 country reports per year. It is hoped that this measure will allow the Committee to consider more reports and issue related recommendations more rapidly, both of which are seen as vitally important to maintaining the political momentum generated by the process of preparing the reports at country level. Another challenge relates to the need to improve the information which provides indicators of government successes or shortcomings in living up to their treaty commitments. The widespread support for the Convention from individuals and groups from diverse professional backgrounds has lead to some confusion when it comes to monitoring the Convention. For example, the human rights community is no longer the only one examining the health status of a population. The medical community is increasingly doing so as well. This development should be welcomed. But it is important to keep in mind that medical professionals may, without a firm grounding in human rights practice, be satisfied, for example, with a statistic indicating that a growing percentage of children in a specific country is immunized against childhood diseases. The human rights community, however, will want more information, including on whether patterns of discrimination prevail. It will want to know if girls are being immunized at the same rate as boys, whether children belonging to indigenous families or minority groups in the country are progressing at a similar rate. The same applies to other issues such as education or access to adequate food. Developing tools to help different groups provide reporting information in this way is a long term project which has already produced some success stories. But more work and involvement from different professional groups is still needed. In the end, the work of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, or any of the other treaty bodies, is only as valuable as the positive changes it helps bring about at country level. That is why the efforts launched under the leadership of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan - which I was charged with implementing during my term as High Commissioner - to involve UN operational agencies more directly in human rights work at country level, were so important and are continuing. But the UN can’t and shouldn’t be expected to carry out this work alone. Local and national authorities, an informed and responsible media, NGOs, national human rights institutions, the private sector and others must be directly involved in turning the recommendations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child into practical actions at local and national level. The experience of the past 15 years shows us that the impact of the Convention implementation process varies enormously from country to country, even among countries in the same sub-region or countries at a similar stage of economic development. In an effort to help address this fact, the Committee has identified a number of good practices that have proven helpful in ensuring appropriate follow-up its recommendations. For example, it has recommended that the organization of a national consultation involving all stakeholders just after the consideration of a State report is a helpful way of deciding on priorities, resources and strategies for implementing report recommendations. The formal transmission of country report recommendations to Parliament is another good practice the Committee has welcomed, as it allows parliamentary debate on government achievements and shortcomings and can stimulate necessary legislative changes. Since 2004, this step has become a standard request made in all country-based recommendations adopted by the Committee. Another form of follow-up the Committee has been developing since 2003 is a series of sub-regional workshops to review measures taken by States to implement Committee recommendations. These workshops are seen as an additional support to governments and other concerned actors both in identifying measures that still need to be implemented at national level and in sharing information and good practices with other States of the region. Holding governments to their commitments What I have been describing, in essence, is a deepening democratic process of holding governments accountable for the rights of children. Yet, the United States – which underlines increasingly the importance of democracy in our post 9/11 world – is one of only two countries, the other being Somalia, which has not ratified the Convention. Let us use this World Congress to drive home a simple message. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a powerful tool for democracy on behalf of children. If the US wants to be consistent in promoting democracy it is time it ratified the Convention and joined in this democratic process. The recent decision of the US Supreme Court, outlawing the death penalty for those who committed the crime when under 18, removes a constitutional impediment to ratification. So let’s send a loud, clear message: sign up America! Children’s rights have today achieved a central place on the public agenda. Children’s voices are being heard in a way that was previously unimagined. Those of you who participated in the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children in 2002 will remember, as I do, the power and clarity of the voices of young people who spoke about their futures and the importance of realizing their rights in order to achieve a more just and peaceful world. Let me here pay a warm tribute to Carol Bellamy for her 10 year leadership of UNICEF, and her strong commitment to placing the CRC at the center of UNICEF’s work. The members of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and the dedicated staff who support their work, also deserve praise for their progressive efforts to make the Convention a practical democratic tool which can assist governments committed to promoting and protecting the rights of the child. As well as urging the United States to ratify, our message to governments must be clear and unambiguous: Keep the commitments you have made to children. The Convention on the Rights of the Child doesn’t provide all the answers, but it does provide an invaluable legal and normative framework that can help direct legislation, policies and programs with the wellbeing of children at the forefront. We must continue to use every tool available to hold governments accountable for the commitments they have made to child rights. But we must also be ready – through the harnessing of new energies – to support governments in need of help who have shown a genuine willingness to make progress. Children’s rights can’t wait. What children want from us is summed up by the poet Raymond Carver: “And what did you want?
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