Convention on the Rights of the Child: Twenty-Five Years Later

Paola Amadei

Belize, along with the rest of the world, is commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  In 1989, a special commitment was made to all children through the adoption of the CRC.  The milestone is being recognized and celebrated universally but is the world is a better place for children?  While policymakers continue to debate this question, many of those responsibilities are not being honored and the rights of too many children are violated daily.  This morning, News Five spoke with EU Ambassador Paola Amadei who reiterated that there are fundamental children’s rights that are still being overlooked today.

Paola Amadei, EU Ambassador to Belize

“The Convention on the Rights of the Child is an almost universally ratified human rights instrument.  It is a sign of the importance that countries attached to this instrument and the fact that it is so widely ratified however, unfortunately doesn’t mean that the rights of the child are universally respected.  For that reason as well UNICEF and the European Union partnered on this special [initiative] here in order to raise further awareness not just on further not just on the convention as a document but on children’s rights.  And they have worked together to prepare what we call a toolkit to allow people working in development to implement programs having a particular attention to the child rights and to take into account whatever they do, whatever sector of the program concerning the rights of the child.  In the case of Belize, we are also implementing since last year a joint program and you might have been exposed already to a number of activities that this program has developed.  One characteristic of the program is that it brings together all actors, both from government and civil society in order to allow that there is broad alliance for children’s rights.”