More information on Children's Rights.

You can find all the children's rights in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. On November 20, 1989, the convention was approved by the United Nations in New York.

By now, the convention is signed by almost every country in the world and it applies in 192 countries. In 54 articles, the agreements touch upon almost everything you encounter in life, from birth until your eighteenth birthday. They are about school, living conditions, health, religion, parents and friends. But also about child labour, war and refugee children.

Together we will discover how the countries live up to the convention and what these rights mean to you and other children. 

There are still many big differences between the children in the richest and the poorest countries in the world.

Children from the poorest families are, compared to children from the richest families, two times more likely to die before the age of five. The likelihood of them not going to school, is five times as big. 

Girls from the poorest families are four times more likely to have an arranged marriage before the age of eighteen.

Almost a 160 million children suffer from chronic malnutrition. About half of those children live in the South of Asia, a third in Afrika.

This was stated in a report from the UN child organization Unicef, published on Friday November 20, Children's Rights day.

Still, there has been some progress since the Convention in 1989.

Anthony Lake, director of Unicef International said: 

"In a little more than one generation infant mortality rate is cut in half, more than 90 percent of children worldwide go to a primary school and an additional 2.6 billion people gained access to clean drinking water.

But of all the poor of the world, half of them are children. 250 million children are living in conflict zones and more than two hundred thousand children have risked their lives to seek shelter in Europe".

'Getting upset'

"Wij kunnen een eind maken aan die oneerlijkheid", zegt hij. Speerpunten zijn onderwijs, toegang tot schoon drinkwater en wc's, tegengaan van hiv-besmetting, en bestrijding van ziektes.

"Children can still get very upset when they see injustice in the world. As adults we lose this a bit. But we have to learn to getting upset and care again, especially when the future of children is involved", says lake. "We can put an end to this injustice. Focal points are education, access to clean drinking water and toilets, prevention of HIV infection, and combating diseases".

Resources:

Go to this page

• for resources about the Convention on the Rights of the Child
• for organisations who are committed to fulfill these rights and
• further information 

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