In 1989, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child laid the foundation for seeing children worldwide as individuals with their own rights and needs and the European Parliament adopted a resolution in November 2019 and all EU members are signatories of this Convention (except the EU itself); however, there are still too many children exposed to war, expulsion, different kind of violences, forces labour, etc. Bettina Vollath, signatory to the Parliament’s resolution on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child urges EU to take the lead in strengthening children’s rights. The European Commission will present its plans for the Strategy on the Rights of the Child in the first quarter of 2021. More and more initiatives and consultations show that children’s rights should be a primordial question, with climate change and AI.
Nevertheless, only a few countries have signed Third Additional Protocol to the Convention which has very strict provisions compared to the previous ones. and these should be simplified as it is very urgent to enforce children’s rights. In addition, there is an urgent need for the European Commission, as well as EU member states to ensure that binding standards in the field of human rights and environmental due diligence are applied in trade negotiations and agreements, so that child labour can be brought to an end worldwide.
In the EU, 28 million children live in poor families and one in four children are at acute risk of poverty. The Coronavirus crisis is increasing the differences between social classes and this mainly affects children. But the most basic topic of course is children in refugee camps on the edge of Europe.
Focusing on children’s rights in all policies – including asylum and migration policy and foreign and economic policy - must be made a priority to ensure that children’s rights are respected all over the world and that no child is left behind.