Children’s Rights
Rights of the child
The child as a normal human being and the holder of rights and independent opinion and the right to special protection for the first time appeared in international law in the twentieth century. In previous centuries, adults saw the child as a compassionate being that had no rights of his own and should be subject to the will of the elders of the family. In Eastern societies, speaking by children in the presence of adults was considered rude.
The need to extend particular care to the child has been stated in the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924 and in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted by the General Assembly on 20 November 1959 and recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (in particular in articles 23 and 24), in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (in particular in article 10) and in the statutes and relevant instruments of specialized agencies and international organizations concerned with the welfare of children,
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted in November 1989 and entered into force in September 1990 has 54 articles. This convention is the most comprehensive international instrument for the protection of the rights of the child. Article 1 of this convection defines child as: “For the purposes of the present Convention, a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier.”
The four core principles of the Convention are:
- Non-discrimination.
- Devotion to the best interests of the child.
- the right to life, survival and development.
- And respect for the views of the child
Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the body of 18 Independent experts that monitors implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by its State parties. It also monitors implementation of two Optional Protocols to the Convention, on involvement of children in armed conflict and on sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. On 19 December 2011, the UN General Assembly approved a third Optional Protocol on a communications procedure, which will allow individual children to submit complaints regarding specific violations of their rights under the Convention and its first two optional protocols. The Protocol entered into force in April 2014.
The Rights of the child in Afghanistan:
In the patriarchal and semi-feudal culture of Afghanistan, there is discrimination against children, even at home. In a room where adults were talking, talking and commenting by a child was considered rude. Children in poor families are forced by circumstances to work hard. Collecting fuel wood and shepherding sheep and cows by children in the village culture is an accepted situation.
§ As a result of more than four decades of war, millions of people have been killed and their children left homeless. They come to cities, including Kabul, to find work. But mafia groups misuse them. These children, who originally need a family environment and should go to school, are used to beg, steal, sell drugs, and so on. Approximately 20 percent of the victims of war crimes by the parties to the current war are children. The number and capacity of the orphanage is small for these children. The Afghan government also does not have the financial capacity to solve this problem through
the establishment of government orphanages. Global aid is needed to rescue these hundreds of thousands of children. The child has a right to be protected against all forms of economic exploitation and protected against forced and heavy labor. … The Afghan government has made a legal obligation under international law to take immediate action to eradicate hazardous child labor by enacting Child Labor Laws
§ Militia groups, including pro-government groups and armed opposition groups, recruit children from poor families to take part in the war. The situation continues, despite protests from international and Afghan human rights organizations. The Taliban’s apparent strategy to throw increasing numbers of children into battle is as cynical and cruel as it is unlawful. Afghan children should be at school and at home with their parents, not exploited as cannon fodder for the Taliban insurgency. (Patricia Gossman, senior Afghanistan researcher HRW). IS he Islamic State in the villages and towns of eastern Afghanistan is forcing children to join their militia. The video link below is proof of this claim.
§ Many reports of child rape, even to children under the age of three, are reported in the local media. But there are more cases that do not become media. These actions are often carried out by local bullies and sometimes for revenge purposes by acquaintances of the child’s family. But the most common form of child sexual abuse is called child play, in which bullies and sometimes local officials force young boys to dance and sex. In February 2013 Human Rights Watch wrote: “The Afghan government should take urgent steps to ensure that rape and sexual abuse of children leads to prosecution of the abusers – not of victims, Human Rights Watch said today. In Afghanistan’s western Herat province, in an October 2012 case that only recently came to light, a court convicted a 13-year-old boy on moral crimes charges, and sentenced him to one year in juvenile detention after he was accused of having sex with two adult men in a public park. “When a man has sex with a 13-year-old child, the child is a victim of rape, not a criminal offender,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “The Afghan government should never have victimized this boy a second time, but instead should have released him immediately with urgent protection and assistance.” The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) second quarterly report of 2017 said the Afghan government has failed to adequately assist bacha bazi victims and that is resulting in the “arrest and prosecution” of boys who have been victims of that abuse. These abuses continue despite President Ashraf Ghani’s June 2016 pledge of “thorough investigation and immediate action” of bacha bazi abuse by military personnel. Reports of sexual abuse of pupils by the teachers and headmasters in schools in Logar province
§ Despite improvement of education for boys and girls in the past two decades, an estimated 3.7 million children are out-of-school in Afghanistan – 60% of them are girls. … Once children do make it, they often receive a lower quality of education because only 48 per cent of their teachers have the minimum academic qualifications (equivalent to an Associate Degree). Many schools have no building and the classes are holding on the ground without chair and carpet. This is the case even in Kabul; Pupils do not get textbooks and other essentials. Corruption, war, insecurity in government-controlled areas, and attacks by the Taliban and ISIS on schools, especially girls’ schools, and the lack of adequate financial resources for facilitating the schools have deprived millions of children of their right to education.
§ Afghan refugee children and teenagers are recruited to religious schools in Pakistan and sent to Afghanistan after being brainwashed to carry out suicide attacks or kill people and destroy their own country. Iran has also brainwashed Afghan refugee
children and adolescents in religious schools in Qom and Mashhad and integrated them into the Fatimid army led by the Quds Force. This division is now being used in Syria against Sunni militia groups. It is also possible that this division will be used against the government of Afghanistan in the future.