CYP Now - Marking the anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Today is the 34th anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly adopting the Convention on the Rights of the Child, after 10 painstaking years of a drafting process that sought to ensure the final treaty’s rights and protections would secure worldwide backing and compliance.

Carolyne Willow is founder director of Article 39. Picture: Article 39

Alongside the Refugee Conventions, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is the most ratified of all international instruments. It contains a multitude of obligations which span economic, social and cultural rights, and civil and political rights. It is relevant to all government policymaking, and every aspect of children’s lives – as Nelson Mandela proclaimed in 2000, the treaty “enshrines the rights of every child, without exception, to a life of dignity and self-fulfilment”. On the UN’s passing of the UNCRC, the executive director of UNICEF, Jim Grant, declared it the “Magna Carta for child rights”.

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