When
it was first set up, Caring for Children adopted the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child, and made acceptance of its
aims a condition of membership to which applicants were required
to ascribe.
Furthermore,
CfC is the National Section of the Federation Internationale des
Communautes Educatives for England and Wales, and FICE-International
also subscribes to the Convention.
The
Convention is a truly remarkable document. It was initiated by Poland
in the first place, but has now been adopted by every country in
the United Nations bar two - one being the United States, to their
shame. That so many countries could negotiate and agree a text is
amazing, and that so many should subscribe to it, despite the huge
differences in religion, culture, wealth and ways of bringing up
children around the world is extraordinary.
The
Convention, sadly, has been blatantly flouted in many countries,
and there is a long way to go before it is generally applied. Lack
of education, child labour, child prostitution and other forms of
exploitation are all too common, but it should not be thought that
infringements are only found in third world countries.
In
England and Wales the Children Act 1989 was being drafted at the
same time as the Convention. This meant that it had built into it
many of the Convention’s ideas and it was a forward-looking
piece of legislation, which has been widely copied in other countries.
However,
this has not prevented the British Government from suffering quite
a mauling when its practice has been scrutinised by the United Nations
against the Convention’s standards. In locking children up
in penal institutions in increasing numbers, for example, this country
is moving backwards. More recently, in the Second Iraq War also,
a number of young people were detached from their units to avoid
their participation in armed conflict as they were under eighteen.
The
value of the Convention is that it has made standards explicit,
and it is hoped that little by little these standards will come
to be observed world-wide.
please
click here for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
