On the completion of two decades of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the global community is nowhere close to making this world a better, safer and healthier place for its children. The biggest challenges continue to be in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa where primary health care, education and protection from poverty, diseases, exploitation and abuse are still big problems.
In the area of under five mortality ratings, one of the most significant markers of overall progress, India continues to be among the most backward countries with a ranking of 49, clearly behind its smaller neighbours Nepal (60) and Bangladesh (58). With a healthy 15th rank, Sri Lanka tops the chart in South Asia, according to a special edition of the UNICEF’s flagship report “The state of the World’s Children” aimed at examining the convention’s evolution, challenges and the progress achieved so far.
The silver lining in the report is that the prevalence of the underweight under-five children has declined in all regions of the world since 1990. This remains a modest achievement in the face of the fact that the rate of under-five mortality is still very slow. The UNICEF report shows that the above rate is a healthier over three per cent in Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh when compared to 2.1 and 2.4 per cent of India and Pakistan respectively.
The incidence of child marriages and exploitation of children as labour remain very high in entire South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The report warns that the old ways of operating will no longer be applicable if we want to address these issues quickly. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, was agreed upon in November 1989 and came into force in the following year. The document targets realignment of priorities based on the four critical actions:
1. Make Children’s best interest primary test of governance by instituting child-neutral laws, budget, policies, legislations and administrative actions.
2. Develop capacities to realise children’s rights in order to understand, respond to and promote child rights at the local levels
3. Support social and cultural values that respect the rights of the child by fostering values and standards for the care, development and protection of children
4. Work together to meet the promise of the convention for all children by promoting collaborative efforts of different agencies in health education, MDGs among other things.
Following are the links and PDFs of the UNICEF report and other documents on the subject:
http://www.unicef.org/rightsite/sowc/pdfs/SOWC_Spec%20Ed_CRC_Main%20Report_EN_090409.pdf
http://www.unicef.org/rightsite/sowc/pdfs/SOWC_SpecEd_CRC_ExecutiveSummary_EN_091009.pdf
http://www.unicef.org/rightsite/sowc/statistics.php