Well, I think from the children?s rights perspective one of the biggest problems that children face is being recognized as individual human beings with rights. And I think one of the biggest challenges faced by children is actually being recognized as members of society, and having been recognized as members of society, that society is actually making provision for them in terms of meeting their needs. And of course within the current economic climate those needs for particular sections of children society become particularly acute.
One of the biggest problems is that there are too many areas of society which don?t recognize the need to put children?s best interests at the forefront of thinking, plus considering parents arguing about children or courts considering whether the state should take children into care put children?s interests at the very forefront of their thinking. More generally, I think that government departments and educational bodies often don?t. So, rather than putting children rights at the forefront to meeting their needs, those needs tend to blend into the background and get substituted by adopt concerns.
I think the difficulty with the economic situation is that of course governments have less money to spend and that means that children are impacted in the sense that the services they need and the services particularly vulnerable children need tend to be the first to fall away. And in that respect I think the thinking is quite short term because it is by pushing in service provisions of those vulnerable children that really governments can save money down the line in terms of healthcare, criminal justice and another such costs.
And I think the problem is that children are easy to forget when one is cutting services and cutting costs because of course they are not normally able to stand up and protest that fact. Children are not, generally speaking, a voting block. They don?t generally have a voice within the democratic process and therefore governments, perhaps not deliberately, but in any event tend not to listen to children as a political force. And in those circumstances, if you don?t have adults who are standing up and fighting for children and their interests and their rights, then those rights and interests tend to get forgotten, particularly in times of economic austerity.
I think we already have the laws that we need, and in particular we have a treaty ? the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child ? which in fact all countries but two in the world have signed up to. And article 12 of that convention requires that states and state organizations listen to children and take account of what they say. And what is really required I think, fundamentally, to get round these issues is a proper implementation in each of the countries of that UN Convention.
I?m not really an expert on child poverty but I can speak from what I see on a day-to-day basis in cases in which I?m involved in in court. And I think that firstly, child poverty and children?s interests more generally are being affected by the current economic climate. I think that measures of austerity are making services less available, meaning that children?s needs are going unmet. And I think from my perspective, certainly what I see on the ground, I would say very little progress is being made, both in respect of eradicating child poverty and in respect of effectively meeting the needs of vulnerable children.
As understand it, certainly our Government has performed in a manifest a commitment to reduce child poverty. But like all political manifests, they are often the victims of events and circumstances. And certainly, I think the current economic climate has made it much more difficult for the government to meet its targets when it is compelled to cut out for reasons of austerity the very services that will assist in hitting the target. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been signed up to by each of the member states of the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights has to be read and interpreted in accordance with the UN Convention.
So, all members of the EU, all those member states should be applying the UN Convention on children?s rights and should be interpreting, both the European Convention and their domestic laws in accordance with that Convention. And I know that many, if not all states, make efforts to do that. The extent to which those efforts are successful is inevitably bound up with the resources that can be applied to that end. I think it is the overarching law, if you like, it is the one that should guarantee that children?s rights are treated consistently across the member states of the EU, including the UK.
Now, each state will have its own laws that hopefully advance children?s welfare and children?s rights but all those laws need to be viewed and applied in a context of the UN Convention which hopefully provides consistency and rigor in relation to each of the state?s domestic laws. I think it is the question really of not having new laws. We?ve got I think quite enough laws aimed at guaranteeing children?s welfare and children?s rights. I think it is about effectively implementing those laws on a consistent basis.
And the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child publishes in think by annual basis its views about how countries are doing with implementation. And certainly the Committee on a regular basis criticizes all the countries in the EU for not effectively and not fully enough implementing the UN Convention. So, governments need to be working harder and more rigorously at actually making sure the Convention is applied in a way that affects and improves the lives of individual children on a day-to-day basis.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child requires those who are signed up to the Convention to report, I think on a five year basis, on how they are doing in terms of implementing the Convention. And when those reports are considered, then the Committee makes recommendations to the state in question as to how they can tighten up and improve their implementation of the Convention.
As matter stands, children cannot take a case, if you like, to the UN and argue it, although there is now a new protocol to the Convention for states also to sign up to which will allow children to actually make complaints to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child about breaches of Convention in their own particular cases.Source: http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_12_27/Modern-society-children-first/
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