Rights of Children

On November 20, 1989, the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a landmark for human rights. Here for the first time was a treaty that sought to address the particular human rights of children and to set minimum standards for the protection of their rights. It is the only international treaty to guarantee civil and political rights as well as economic, social, and cultural rights.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely accepted human rights treaty - of all the United Nations member states, only the United States and the collapsed state of Somalia have not ratified it. The United States continues to lead a defensive action against Children's human Rights lobbying against further measures designed to protect children - most recently against efforts to stop the use of child soldiers.
These last 10 years have seen an enormous growth in awareness of children's rights. Activists have learned important lessons in successfully implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child. One of the Convention's key strengths is that it recognizes that rights must be actively promoted if they are going to be enforced - awareness isn't enough. Although children's human rights are still a long way from realization - we have a powerful tool for campaigning for the protection of children's human rights in the almost worldwide acceptance of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.