WUNRN
Convention on the Rights of the
Child
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CRC.aspx
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http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsId=49845#.VL9sTHktHmI
SOMALIA RATIFIES THE UN
CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD
Significant importance for Somali GIRLS
20 January 2015 – The United Nations today applauded
Somalia’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) – a
move which was praised as being an “important step” towards protecting and
promoting the rights of all children in the war-torn nation and an explicit
commitment towards improving the lives of its youngest citizens.
“By ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child,
the government of Somalia is making an investment in the wellbeing of its
children, and thus in the future of its society,” Anthony Lake, Executive
Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF),
declared in a press release,
as he welcomed the news.
“The central message of the Convention is that every
child deserves a fair start in life,” he continued. “What can be more important
than that?”
The CRC was adopted by the General Assembly on 20
November 1989 and has been ratified by 195 countries, including Somalia, making
it the most widely ratified international human rights treaty in history. As of
today, only two countries have yet to ratify the landmark treaty – South Sudan
and the United States.
Nonetheless, its widespread adoption marked the first
time that children were explicitly recognized as having specific rights and the
treaty itself is considered to be a powerful human rights tool.
At a ceremony marking the ratification and held at a
local school in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, Special Representative of the
Secretary-General for Somalia (SRSG), Nicholas Kay, welcomed
the Somali Government’s dedication to improving the lives of its children
alongside Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and before hundreds of
schoolchildren.
“As the nation recovers from decades of conflict, the
Federal Government and its international partners have a duty to protect and
serve Somalia’s most vulnerable communities,” Mr. Kay affirmed.
“I hope Somalia will now also begin the process of
becoming party to the Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the
Child,” he added, promising the UN’s support to Somali authorities in that
regard.
While the CRC is a universally agreed set of
non-negotiable standards and obligations, providing protection and support for
the rights of children, its three Optional Protocols deal, respectively, with
protecting children from trafficking, prostitution and child pornography;
prohibiting their recruitment in armed conflict; and allowing children to bring
forward their complaints to the UN if their rights are being abused.
For her part, Leila Zerrougui, the UN Special
Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, celebrated Somalia’s move ‘in
bringing us closer to our common objective of protecting the country’s children
from the impact of conflict’, and echoed Mr. Kay’s appeal for the Somali
authorities to move forward in ratifying the Optional Protocols, including the
Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict.
In addition, she called on the Government to maintain its
commitment to the objectives of the Children, Not
Soldiers campaign by working towards a child-free army by the end of
2016. The ratification process will be finalized once the Government of Somalia
deposits the instruments of ratification at UN Headquarters in New York.