GENEVA
UN child rights experts hailed a new treaty Monday that will allow children to complain directly to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child about alleged violations of their rights.
“It is a sad reality that, 25 years after the adoption of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, children’s rights continue to be violated on a daily basis, including through violence, exploitation and abuse," the experts said in a statement. "We hope that this new treaty will give voice to children’s testimonies and help them to obtain the necessary remedy and reparation. We applaud those states which, by ratifying this protocol, have confirmed their determination to improve children’s access to justice.”
The treaty, called an "optional protocol," is essentially an amendment to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and it entered into force on Monday. Each country that is a signatory to the convention must separately ratify the protocol for children there to have this addition protection. And children will only able to complain if they have first exhausted all legal avenues in their own countries.
Despite the celebratory remarks, no mechanism is yet in place for children to file complaints. The various countries must first ratify the protocol and the UN hopes that each of the convention's signatories will set up an in-country procedure through which children can then complain to the UN body.
Nevertheless, the UN experts called the agreement a significant step forward.
“Today marks the beginning of a new era for children’s rights," the experts' statement said. "Children are now further empowered as this Optional Protocol recognizes their capacity to exercise and claim their own rights.”
The new protocol will enable children and their representatives to submit complaints to the Committee on the Rights of the Child about specific violations of their rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as under its other two optional protocols -- one on the involvement of children in armed conflict, and the other on the sale of children, child pornography and child prostitution.
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