Ratifying convention on the rights of the child

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities.

No human rights agreement has ever been ratified so quickly by so many nations as the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. In less than four years, over 150 nations accepted the document as an internationally agreed minimum standard for the treatment of children. In 1999, all but two member countries of the United Nations had not ratified the convention: Somalia and the USA. In addition to setting out the rights of children to basic health care and education, the Convention seeks to protect the young from abuse, exploitation or neglect at home, at work, and in armed conflicts. Signatories also explicitly take responsibility for handicapped, migrant, minority, indigenous, maltreated and neglected children and children without families. To assist with this, families are promoted as the carers of children, to provide an appropriate standard of living and arena for child development.