Review of some of the general underlying principles
- The motivation to realize all human rights (HR) should be based on a sense of justice and solidarity; compassion is not the right motivation.
- In this domain, Governments have Obligations of Result (e.g., achieving the Millenium Goals) and Obligations of Conduct (e.g., implementation of a plan to achieve the latter). Remember that they do not have the option to indefinitely defer efforts to ensure the full realization of these obligations; they have to immediately begin to take steps to fulfill them. In that sense, we can identify HR violations through the direct action of States and through their omissions. The latter, because there are minimum core State obligations to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum levels of each of the violated rights. Remember also that resource scarcity does not relieve States from these minimum obligations and that all basic needs are HR (but not vice-versa). HR cannot be prioritized either, but actions to reduce and end their violation can and should e prioritized (in the form of concrete, explicit plans).
- Moreover, HR have no time limit: up until a specific right is fully realized, this right is violated. This brings into serious question the setting of goals to ‘halve poverty or malnutrition’. [So, should we continue to pursue goals such as halving malnutrition by 2015…?].
- Always keep in mind that a HR approach does not only change what we should do, but it will also change why and how we do our work. The first change is to recognize poor people –and children– as protagonists in their development; this requires changing the mentality of all sorts of development workers. There simply cannot be a HR-based society without individuals who have internalized the HR philosophy (hence this Reader).
Realizing children’s rights
- All human beings have HR, whether or not a particular country has ratified a specific universal instrument. For example, children in the USA –which has not yet ratified the Convention of he Rights of the Child– have every bit the same rights as children living in countries that have ratified the CRC.
- Rights holders and their representatives (e.g., parents) should have the capacity and the opportunity to take action to insist that those who have the corresponding duties do in fact carry out their duties. Rights are thus to be seen as our exercise of free will and choice. Moreover, rights holders retain their rights even if they are unable to take any action to demand their realization. There is a fundamental difference between protecting children –because they are dependent (and deserve our compassion)– and respecting children, because they are powerful. [Actually, the CRC prohibits those who already have power from exerting that power in a negative way over children].
- UN-sanctioned conventional HR basically regulate the relationships between individuals and the State. The CRC is different. Towards children, it recognizes duties of parents and other non-state duty bearers at all levels of society, including at the international level.
- Not infrequently, the violations of children’ rights are a direct result of the violation of the rights of their care-givers own HR. To begin with, a large majority of children whose rights are violated live in poor families and poor communities. Therefore, a child-rights approach must always also be focused on the alleviation of the poverty of the family. So, when we advocate and mobilize for the realization of children’s rights, we have to do that in the larger context of HR, including women’s, children’s and other pertinent economic, social and cultural rights.
- Always keep in mind that rights are not just claims, but claims against someone! Therefore, in the Children’s Rights domain (as much as in other HR domains), capacity building has to be empowering so as to empower children’s guardians to confront Government inertia, as well as to empower children themselves (yes, children…) to claim their rights.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City