Rock-solid principles in an uncertain world
Deborah McMillan
Monday, June 27, 2022
Ferocious storms, a virulent pandemic, volatile stock markets, airline failure… I almost want to ask what more could possibly go wrong this year. But even I, the least superstitious of people, would feel uneasy about tempting fate like that.
And yet, as grim as it has been, there is at least one useful thing to have emerged from these past few months of turmoil.
If nothing else, 2022 has been a vivid reminder that the world is a deeply unpredictable place. Just when you think you’re starting to get a handle on it, something inevitably comes along to turn it all upside down again.
Obviously, this is hardly a revelation – for most people, the observation that life is unpredictable is one to be filed away under Basil Fawlty’s category of ‘The Bleeding Obvious’. But for me, as Jersey’s Commissioner for Children and Young People, it’s a reminder I can’t get often enough.
Why? Because the promise that both the UK and Jersey have made when they signed up to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is a living, breathing thing. It is not just a document which, once signed, exists in an ideological vacuum. It is a recognition that we will use the articles of the UNCRC to continually respond to whatever the world throws at our children and young people.
And as we have seen with the many challenges of this year, responding to what the world throws at you is neither an easy nor predictable task. It requires constant vigilance and, above all, a set of rock-solid principles to guide you.
There are, of course, a number of challenges when it comes to children and young people, which are still waiting to be properly addressed. These include access to education, good food and healthcare to name a few.
But I have found that the most common obstacle to making material changes in young people’s lives has been a sense that we have ticked all the right boxes, and that things will somehow just take care of themselves.
This, of course, could not be further from the truth.
Signing up to a commitment like the UNCRC is only a beginning. The nature of the treaty is that it is progressive. Governments must continually engage with it, refresh it and enforce it as part of progressive implementation.
We need to work hard, in other words, to protect children’s rights in a world that is constantly changing and will be for generations to come. But (and let me take this chance to bust one of our most persistent myths) this is not an ambition that comes at the expense of adults’ rights.
Throughout my work as Commissioner for Children and Young People, I often come across the question: Why is it that children need special rights? Because, after all, they’re only humans like the rest of us, and humans already have rights.
Well, that’s true, but it’s not the whole truth. Unlike adults, children do not have the power to make the decisions that affect their lives. They do not have their own money, their own agency. They are, in the end, dependent on the adults who make these decisions for them.
But what if those adults are either unwilling or unable to make the right choices? It is in answer to that simple question that the origins of the UNCRC lie.
And it is in response to the many things that directly and specifically affect children’s rights that we must, as signatories to this treaty, remain closely attuned.
Whether this involves the rights of a child to have access to good food or whether it’s as simple as a child’s right not to be smacked, the principles remain the same.
And, as was the case with the latter example, modernising our laws can often be a refreshingly simple process. In Jersey our politicians’ decision to no longer allow parents to smack their children, for example, involved a minor tweak to an existing law, rather than the creation of a whole new one.
As daunting and unpredictable as the future can often seem, it is a nonetheless heartening thought that, if tackled with the right set of guiding principles based on the rights of the child, so many of the obstacles that await us can be properly and lastingly overcome.
Deborah McMillan is commissioner for children and young people in Jersey.