Children’s rights

Rights
Human rights are fundamental to an individual’s existence, they are not luxuries. Everybody is enrift goldtitled to have their human rights respected. Human rights aim to protect all people and provide for their full development. With rights come responsibilities to ensure that we do not infringe on the rights of others.

Convention on the Rights of the Child
History
There are many international legal documents outlining human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, agreed to unanimously by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948, sets out the basic rights and freedoms of all people.

Children have the right to special protection because of their defencelessness against mistrearift goldtment. The first United Nations statement devoted exclusively to the rights of children was the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1959. This was a moral rather than a legally binding document. In 1989 the legally binding Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the United Nations. In 54 articles the Convention incorporates the whole spectrum of human rights – civil, political, economic, social and cultural – and sets out the specific ways these should be ensured for children and young people. In May 2000, two Optional Protocols, one on the involvement of children in armed conflict and a second on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, were adopted to strengthen the provisions of the Convention in those areas.