Child
Rights Glossary : H
HEALTH
Every day, 30,500 boys and girls under five die of mainly preventable
causes, and even more children and young people succumb to illnesses,
neglect, accidents and assaults that did not have to happen. Failure
sets in early: what happens during the very earliest years of
a child’s life, from birth to age 3, influences how the
rest of childhood and adolescence unfolds. Yet this critical time
is usually neglected in the policies, programmes and budgets of
countries.
A sound start embraces sound nutrition, healthcare, a hygienic
home and community environment, and care, play and stimulation.
Millions are still denied these rights.
HIV/AIDS
Every month 250,000 children and young people become infected
with HIV. In Africa, the social and economic devastation caused
by HIV/AIDS in the last decade is greater than the combined destruction
of the continent’s wars: an estimated 200,000 Africans,
most of them women and children, died as a result of conflicts
in 1998 while 2 million people were killed by AIDS.
While the educated have access to the knowledge needed to protect
themselves from the virus, the life-saving information is not
finding its way to those with little or no education. A study
showed that the uneducated, whether men or women, were five times
more likely to know nothing about the disease than were those
with post-primary schooling.
The same combination of stigma, taboo and silence that fuels
the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa is repeating itself in South
Asia, where more than 5 million people have been infected, about
half of them women. South Asian children tend to be invisible
in the pandemic. When information is collected it is rarely disaggregated
to show the disease’s effects on children. This makes it
all the more difficult to identify those whose rights are most
at risk and protect them from further harm.
Commercial sexual exploitation of children
in a world with HIV/AIDS
The commercial sexual exploitation of children continues to be
one of the most pernicious forms of child abuse. It both denies
the fundamental human rights of children and has devastating psychosocial
and physical consequences for them. This exploitation increasingly
threatens children's right to life - as children who are sexually
exploited now face the risk of infection with the HIV virus, which
causes AIDS.
Efforts to eradicate the sexual exploitation of children should
involve all sectors of society, including government, law enforcement,
the media, the business sector, religious groups, education and
health sectors, non-governmental and inter-governmental organisations,
families, communities and children themselves. The Convention
on the Rights of the Child, which has now been ratified by over
180 governments, is the foundation on which these efforts must
be built.
Such efforts should address the root causes of commercial sexual
exploitation. These include, among other things, the demand for
children, as evidenced in the behaviour of the exploiters; the
greed and poverty that provide the economic incentives for such
exploitation; and the social and cultural traditions that devalue
children and women, making their sexual exploitation not only
possible but widespread.
Among efforts to combat the commercial sexual exploitation of
children and its consequences, including HIV/AIDS, it is essential
to:
» Remove children
from situations of commercial sexual exploitation;
» Strengthen and
enforce laws against commercial sexual exploitation of children;
» Raise community
awareness through public information campaigns against commercial
sexual exploitation;
» Target situations
of commercial sexual exploitation with Sexually Transmitted
Disease/HIV- related prevention interventions to reduce the
harm inflicted upon children;
» Provide psycho-social
and health services and support, including HIV-related issues,
counselling and care, to children who have been exploited and
to their families;
» Change social norms
and values that permit, condone, or encourage commercial sexual
exploitation;
» Reduce the vulnerability
of children and families to becoming involved in the sex trade
by reinforcing their resistance to the lure of gain and helping
them withstand the threat of force.
HUMAN RIGHTS
Human rights
belong to each of us equally.
All of us are born with human rights – a principle the Convention
on the Rights of the Child makes very clear. Human rights are not
something a richer person gives to a poorer person; nor are they
owned by a select few and given to others as a mere favour or gift.
They belong to each and every one of us equally. Children living
in developing countries have the same rights as children in wealthy
countries. And human rights apply to all age groups – they
do not magically begin with a child's passage into adulthood, nor
do they stop when the mandate of the Convention ceases on the child's
reaching the age of 18.
The Convention places equal emphasis on all of the rights for
children. There is no such thing as a 'small' right and no hierarchy
of human rights. All the rights enumerated in the Convention –
the civil and political rights as well as the economic, social
and cultural rights – are indivisible and interrelated,
with a focus on the child as a whole.
This indivisibility of rights is key to interpreting the Convention.
Decisions with regard to any one right must be made in the light
of all the other rights in the Convention. For example, it is
not sufficient to ensure that a child receives immunisation and
health care, only for that child on reaching the age of 14 to
be sold into bonded labour or conscripted into an army. It is
not enough to guarantee the right to education, only to fail to
ensure that all children are enrolled in school and can go to
school equally, regardless of gender or economic class.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child confirms that children
have a right to express their views and to have their views taken
seriously and given due weight – but it does not state that
children's views are the only ones to be considered. The Convention
also explicitly states that children have a responsibility to
respect the rights of others, especially those of parents. The
Convention emphasises the need to respect children's "evolving
capacities," but does not give children the right to make
decisions for themselves at too young an age. This is rooted in
the common-sense concept that the child's path from total dependence
to adulthood is gradual.
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