Drawing on the contributions of several academic disciplines including law, psychology, sociology, history, educational and health sciences, economy and anthropology, an interdisciplinary approach guides the student into a selection of critical issues concerning children’s rights. Participants will gain insight relative to the development of this specific human rights category, as well as to the evolution of the challenges faced by children over time and society’s efforts to respond. Successful international strategies and programs promoting children’s rights will be highlighted, as well as the role of key actors involved in international organizations working in this field. This open online course provides an overview of the most important features of children’s human rights. A central portion of the MOOC will consist of a presentation of the international and regional standards on children’s rights and the related international and regional judicial and quasi-judicial bodies designed to ensure their implementation. No prerequisites or specific background is required to register for this MOOC. The course is conceived as an introductory level program, but participants, who wish to deepen their knowledge in the field of children’s rights, or already have some prior knowledge, will have access to additional reading material on a weekly basis. Participants who successfully complete the class activities and final assessment may request for a paid certificate of accomplishment signed by the Instructor and the main professors responsible for the program. However, no credits are awarded. The course consists of seven topical modules distributed on 4 weeks. English is the only language of instruction.
1.2 The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: from drafting to reception.
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From the course by University of Geneva
Children's Human Rights - An Interdisciplinary Introduction
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From the lesson
International standards and monitoring systems
The module begins with the presentation of the background, origins and main content of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and provides details about the preparatory work and the international political context in which the Convention was drafted. The content of international human rights norms are discussed using the subdivision between civil and political rights on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights on the other. Furthermore, the general UN human rights monitoring mechanisms will be introduced, followed by the presentation of the CRC monitoring system. A discussion on the importance of regional human rights monitoring systems for children in Africa, Asia and Latin America will be the subject of a specific round table. Within the monitoring framework a particular attention is dedicated to role of key actors: Independent National Human Rights Institutions (INHRIs) on Children’s rights, Non-Governmental organizations (NGOs) and children.
Meet the Instructors
Roberta RuggieroDr
Center for Children's Rights Studies
Philip D. JafféProfessor
Center for Children's Rights Studies
Jean ZermattenDr. h. c.
Center for Children's Rights Studies and International Institute for Children's Rights
[MUSIC]
I'd like to give you an idea of how the Convention came in to being,
in other words,
from the moment that it was proposed to the moment that it was adopted.
I had the pleasure and the great experience of being the spokesperson for
the non-governmental organizations involved in the drafting process,
so I was present for most of the time.
It all started off with a proposal by Poland in 1978, which
was based almost entirely on the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
This was because Poland wanted to ensure that
the Convention could be adopted during
the International Year of the Child, which was in 1979.
So Poland felt that it was the best idea to provide a text
which had already gained international approval in 1959,
and could be, Poland felt, adapted to a Convention,
so that it would be a lasting memory of
the International Year of the Child in the coming year.
Poland was particularly happy with the text of the Convention because
it concentrated almost entirely on economic, social and cultural rights.
There was only one civil right in the Declaration,
and therefore that corresponded to
Poland's thinking at that time in relation to the rights of the child.
When the proposal was made to the then-Commission on Human Rights,
as is the case with all treaties or all future treaties,
the UN Secretary General contacts all member states and
inter-governmental organizations requesting feedback on the proposal.
And this feedback was to some extent supportive but also very critical.
The first criticism that was made of the text was that
it didn't cover a wide range of rights.
Precisely, only the economic, social, and cultural rights essentially.
So there was no mention for example, of juvenile justice questions.
There was no mention of children in armed conflict situations.
There was no mention of children of minorities or indigenous peoples.
And there was no mention, for example, of adoption.
That meant that it was incomplete in its scope in the view of many states.
It also took no account of development since 1959,
when the Declaration had been drafted.
These developments were many, including the fact that
the UN itself was a very different organization.
Of course, decolonialization had taken place in the ensuing period.
And there were many new human rights instruments, in particular the two
covenants on civil and political rights, and on economic, social, and
cultural rights, which had come into force in that ensuing period, and
which had to be taken into account in drafting a new
Convention on the human rights of the child.
Another criticism was that it was not worded in a way that was suitable for
a treaty.
The Declaration was worded in a way which doesn't correspond to
the kind of technical language required in a treaty.
It lacked detail, and it contained vague
formulations of the principles that it put forward.
Another criticism was that the monitoring mechanism was very weak.
States just had to report to the Economic and Social Council under
the Polish proposal, and not as is the case,
of course, today, to a treaty body, the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
And then there was a very forceful argument which was that
precisely because the International Year of the Child was
about to begin on the 1st of January 1979.
It will be a good idea to wait until the end of that year to see what
new initiatives had been taken, what new concerns might be brought up,
and to take account therefore of the International Year of the Child,
results in drafting this new Convention.
Strangely, some quarters remained completely silent.
They had made neither supportive nor critical noises.
And one of the most surprising in that regard was UNICEF,
which didn't say a word.
And that was to mark the first half of the drafting process.
In other words, that UNICEF did not become involved in
the drafting process until later, as I'll explain.
Despite this criticism on the part of member states,
the UN General Assembly nonetheless suggested,
or urged even, that the Convention be adopted
during the International Year of the Child.
But the Commission on Human Rights decided otherwise and
set up a working group of member states in order
to deal with all the criticisms and suggestions that
have been made and to come up with another draft.
And as a result of this, Poland submitted a revised draft
of the Convention in order to have it as the basic working document.
And this revised draft was very different, much improved,
and served indeed as the basis of the drafting in the ensuing years.
So how did the drafting work?
Well, first of all, as I said it was
a working group called an Open-ended Working Group which was set up
to deal with the revision and the drafting of the Convention.
It was composed of member states of the Commission on Human Rights,
plus Any other interested member state of the UN,
plus inter-governmental organizations with an interest such
as WHO, the ILO, and of course UNICEF.
And then also allowed to be present were international
non-governmental organizations who were interested in the process.
Interestingly, it took its decisions on the basis of consensus.
In other words, there was never a vote on text.
Everything had to be adopted by consensus.
The unfortunate result of that was that several issues
were binned because there was no consensus.
For example there was no mention of early marriage
even though there was considerable support for
the idea of having a specific reference to early marriage in the convention.
The idea was dropped because no consensus could be
found on the way in which it was to broached.
But if there were disadvantages to consensus,
the big advantage of course was that there was thorough
discussion on all topics to be broached and
the resulting text was the one that could be put to
the UN General Assembly in the end because there was no more discussion needed.
Everybody had been happy with the text as it stood.
However, the drafting process did not have
much priority on the part of states.
They were not willing to invest a great deal into the drafting process
and this resulted in rather poor attendants during
the drafting sessions which took place once a year, just for week.
And so, there was initially very slow progress.
One, two, three, four paragraphs or articles at each session, that's all.
So, the drafting of the convention did not get off to a magnificent start.
An important issue for the drafting was the state of the East-West relations.
Of course, in the early 80's the Cold War was still a reality.
And since the proposal had come from Poland, the Western
states were often opposed on principle to
a number of suggestions made by counterparts in the East
simply because of the Cold War political reality.
And this carried on until the mid-80s when the Cold War started to thaw.
So as of '85, '86, there was a definite improvement
in the way the convention was drafted.
It's not only East-West but also North-South which was an issue.
And that was because there were few countries, in particular from Africa but
also to a certain extent from Asia, who could invest the time
in joining the drafting group and
therefore they were somewhat underrepresented.
They did have some very good representatives but
they were still underrepresented numerically.
And that meant that there were fears that this was going to become a convention
drawn up by the North which would not take account of concerns in the South.
But by the end,
the non-industrialized countries had improved their participation and
that included countries of Islamic Law.
And therefore, by the end, we had a situation where participation was indeed
more reflective of the reality of the world as a whole.
Another aspect which had an influence on the drafting was the fact that several
other instruments were being formulated at the same time.
Part of instruments for example in this field of
Juvenile Justice and in the field of Foster care and adoption.
And so there was a kind of transfer of experience from
the drafting of those instruments into the drafting of the convention.
The NGOs were not automatically given the floor.
In fact they could be invited to take the floor during this drafting session.
But they had no rights to do so.
Initially, the NGO's who were interested in taking part
were disorganized, and rather desperate bunch.
At the time there were no fewer children's rights NGOs.
Plenty of children's in NGOs but no children's rights NGOs.
With consultative status at the UN, in other words that
therefore had the right to take part in the working group.
Human rights NGOs, there were some interested.
Human rights NGOs of course knew the UN system very well and
indeed had taken part in certain drafting sessions of other instruments.
The children's NGOs on the other hand didn't know the system but
they had obviously the substantive knowledge.
But each was working in its own way.
They weren't collaborating and therefore, as a group, they did not
have the kind of credibility necessary for making an impact on the convention.
So in 1983, the NGOs realized that they were not having
the influence that they needed to have and they got together and
created what they called an NGO Ad Hoc Group for
the convention on the rights of the child.
So for the first time, human rights and
children's organizations joined hands.
And they produced their first joint proposals,
coordinated joint proposals in writing, for the 1984 session of the working group.
And from that time on everything changed.
NGOs were given the floor almost systematically and
they had created sufficient credibility to be listened to and
in many cases, to provide effective
guidance on the drafting.
As of 1986, UNICEF, which had supported the NGO group, UNICEF, itself,
became involved in the substance of the drafting process.
This also had a terrific impact on the way
that states regarded the drafting of the Convention.
Overall the NGOs had a significant impact on about a third
of the substantive articles and some impact on another third.
So it was quite unprecedented in terms of
the drafting of an international instrument.
Why did the process take so long?
Well, partly because it was based on this
consensus which meant that every detail, every
comma, had to be agreed by the whole working group.
But also because there were some truly controversial issues.
Let me give you an idea of four of them.
Firstly, what is a child?
When does childhood begin?
When does childhood end?
There was tremendous discussion on this, from two aspects.
One, obviously, is,
when does a human being begin his or her childhood?
Is it at zero, is it at conception, is it at some other point?
And then when does childhood end.
Is it at adolescence, or is it at the age of majority?
In the end, it was decided not to resolve the first one, to leave it open,
by having both a reference in the preamble to
the protection of children before and after birth.
And for the second, for the age at which childhood ends,
it was decided that in the end it would be 18,
because that was the age at which
most countries set the age of majority.
But you can imagine that it took a great
deal of discussion to reach that kind of consensus.
Then there was a totally different example.
That of the reaffirmation of fundamental freedoms.
Fundamental freedoms, such as the right of association,
the right to choose one's religion,
the right to receive and impart information.
These fundamental freedoms existed in the covenants
on civil and political rights, which was enforced.
But frankly few people realize that these
fundamental freedoms covered children as well because there was
no lower age limit of which such rights would be afforded.
So there was a big debate on whether or
not they should be reaffirmed in the context of the convention.
In the end they were, and happily so.
Again, a very different example is the one on adoption.
When Poland made its revised proposal in 1979,
the emphasis was on facilitating adoption for children.
But in the 80s, there were many situations particularly
though not only in terms of inter country adoption,
where bad practice and indeed criminal activity had been observed.
So by the time we got to the end of the drafting process,
there was much more circumspection about adoption as a child protection measure.
And the aim as is now reflected in the final
convention was less to facilitate adoption and
much more to ensure that children were protected throughout the adoption process.
So now we have a situation where instead of facilitating adoption,
the first obligation of states is to insure that it takes place
with the best interests of the child as the paramount consideration.
Quite a leap, quite a change
over the ten years of the drafting.
And the final example is the controversy over
the age as of which children would be allowed
to participate in an armed conflict.
The convention now says 15, and that was the lowest common denominator.
It was almost not consensus.
It was the lowest common denominator on which countries could agree.
And we now know, of course, that so
many countries wanted to see the minimum age of participation in conflict
at 18, in other words, that it should be prohibited completely in the convention.
That there was the initiative to draw up
an optional protocol on the subject in 2000.
So that was the basic scene of the development
of the convention from its initial proposal through to adoption.
And there were tensions right up to
the last moment but consensus prevailed.
And what we need to do now,
is to ensure that we keep the basis for
making sure that the fact consensus remains intact.
>> [MUSIC]
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