NGO Strategy for Children's Rights and the UN Convention

Introduction: The Challenge of Universal Ratification

Since 1990, the United Nations has been attempting to secure the universal ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and as of now, every member country of the United Nations has signed and ratified the treaty except Somalia and the United States. As the leader of an NGO working toward the rights of the child as outlined in the Convention, there are a number of steps that can be taken both to encourage the universal adoption of the Convention specifically and to work toward the maintenance and protection of those rights more generally. Doing so, however, requires a reinterpretation of some commonly held assumptions regarding the nature of human rights, because attempting to establish any rights through the authority of a written document will always be problematic unless one is honest about how powerful — or powerless — that document really is.

Key Provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Before discussing the ways in which an NGO could work toward the rights of the child established in the Convention, it will be useful to briefly review the most important points of the Convention and to take an honest account of documents such as this one and their actual relation to the maintenance and security of human rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child seeks to acknowledge that children represent a special class of human beings requiring special consideration and care. As the preamble of the Convention notes, this acknowledgment of a need for special rights and considerations for children had previously "been stated in the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924 and in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted by the General Assembly on 20 November 1959 and recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," but those earlier declarations did not constitute a legally binding treaty that all signatories would be required to follow, and as such did not actually secure the rights for children they outlined (United Nations 1990). The Convention gives these rights the protection of law and requires signatory countries to amend their legislation — largely concerning child custody, labor, and military service — to ensure they are not in violation of the Convention.

The rights included in the Convention stem from these earlier declarations as well as from additional consideration of the particular developmental needs of children. The basic human rights that the Convention outlines can be summarized as "the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life," arising from "the four core principles of the Convention [which] are non-discrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child" (UNICEF 2011). Some of the rights included are obvious, while others may seem unnecessary at first glance, but all of them work toward ensuring children receive the best treatment possible while maintaining a balance between individual autonomy for the child and a safe home environment ideally overseen by a responsible parent or guardian.

For instance, Article 7 of the Convention ensures, among other things, that children "shall have the right from birth to a name" (UN 1990). Establishing the right to a name may seem unnecessary or arbitrary at first, but because a name is necessary for inclusion in the political order and for accessing the advantages afforded to citizens, the Convention includes it as an explicit right. Moreover, denying a child a name is the first step toward dehumanizing them, which ultimately leads to some of the more severe problems the Convention was intended to combat — such as the use of child soldiers or forced prostitution. This is just one of many explicit rights outlined in the Convention, but it helps to demonstrate the extent to which the Convention seeks to clearly delineate the myriad ways in which children must be protected.

The Philosophical Basis of Human Rights

Before discussing the ways in which an NGO might effectively work toward securing the rights outlined in the Convention, it is necessary to honestly confront the limitations of the Convention and, indeed, of any legal document. In short, the Convention is merely a document, and like all cultural and social productions, has no inherent meaning in and of itself. This is not, however, an existential criticism suggesting that all political organization or the codification of legal ideals is entirely pointless. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that in reality there is no such thing as an inherent right, because nature and reality make no claims to ethics or morality.

While this may seem like a bleak prospect, it does not generally impede the functioning of society. It does, however, require one to consider what the purpose of documents such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child actually is, if there is no objectively definable ethics or morality. A look at the preamble to the United States Constitution will help to reveal this purpose.

Rights as Social Tools: Lessons from the U.S. Constitution

Any document claiming to outline or defend essential rights for human beings — children or otherwise — is not actually discussing anything essential, but rather what might more helpfully be understood as essential standards for the functioning of society. Put another way, rights are useful not because they are natural or inherent by virtue of people's existence as human beings, but rather because they offer guidelines for balancing individual happiness alongside the concessions required of every individual when entering into any kind of union or group. For any concerns regarding the prevalence of coded religiosity in American political documents, the preamble to the Constitution includes an implicit acknowledgment that documents such as these only matter insofar as people have agreed that they matter in achieving certain goals. The preamble states:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (U.S. Constitution)

The preamble does not claim that the Constitution — and the rights included as amendments — are being codified and supported because they represent any kind of natural justice that human beings are inherently owed. Rather, it claims that the codification and support of these rights in the form of the Constitution will make it easier to achieve the goals outlined, the first of which is the formation of "a more perfect Union." Documents such as this serve to ensure the successful functioning of individuals within society. Because this is a relatively measurable outcome, people are able to devise logical means of achieving it, so that human rights are shown to be far more important and useful than if they were simply assumed to derive from some ephemeral special status granted to Homo sapiens above other species.

This distinction matters because it clarifies the reasons for attempting to protect human rights: rights are shown to be a tool for social success rather than a presupposed obligation. In turn, the maintenance of human rights becomes the implicit responsibility of any person who desires to remain part of society, because as a member of society they have an implicit stake in ensuring its success.

Conclusion: Honest Advocacy for Children's Rights

An NGO working to support and protect the rights of the child as laid out in the United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child must first begin with an honest appraisal of the limitations of legal and political documents, as well as the true purpose and function of those documents in relation to society. Acknowledging that rights — far from being essential or inherent — are merely a means by which society can ensure its successful and equitable function would allow an NGO to begin an education campaign focused on highlighting the ways in which child rights affect everyone in society, not just children and parents. Framing the issue in this way helps forestall two of the biggest drawbacks of an NGO focusing on any specific issue, because it prevents the fight for child rights from being pigeonholed as a special interest and ultimately ensures that there will be even more time and money to support other issues in the future.

Works Cited

"Convention on the Rights of the Child." UNICEF. UNICEF, 3 June 2011. Web. 21 Nov 2011. <

United Nations. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Convention on the Rights of the Child. 1990. Print. <

United States. U.S. Constitution. Print. <