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What are Children's Rights?
Imagine you are the mother of a 16-month-old baby who died last night of croup, an entirely preventable disease, but you did not have access to treatment. Imagine cholera just killed your sweet 2-year-old, another preventable disease, but you could not afford the medication. Imagine you could not provide your child with safe drinking water. Imagine your four kids suffered from malnutrition before they reached 5 and two of them died. Imagine your wife and three kids all died of AIDS. Your wife's death was not preventable, but if you had the proper medication, all three of your children could still be alive.
These things seem strange to talk about. They are not of concern for most of us, something we do not have to think about.Yet these things happen everyday. We ignore this fact, thinking it is another lie, another rumor. We choose to ignore the constant cry for help, but we must take action on this cry, for it will only grow louder and more desperate with time. Too many have never known safety. Too many will never see tomorrow.
There is a wide diversity of cultures and beliefs within our world. One of the most diverse beliefs is deciding when a child becomes an adult. In some places a boy becomes a man when he kills a lion. In others you are an adult as soon as your body changes. In yet another culture you are an adult once you are a certain age, no matter what you have done in the past years, how you look, and where you are in puberty. Different cultures also believe in different ways of treating children. In some cultures people believe in detaining children and giving them the strap. Other cultures think this is appalling and spoil their children. Then there are countries that do not even pay attention to their children. Some cultures think their children were put on this earth to work for them and that those children are slaves. This wide variety of beliefs and cultures prevents us from enforcing the rights that children should have.
Another big factor in children's rights is how much the parents have to give to the child. In many countries safe drinking water is not yet available to all, not everybody has shelter, and some parents have no food to give to their children. These factors are still a problem in many countries. We need to fix these problems before we make it law that all families must provide their children with the basic needs or else …, because at least a quarter of the world would be facing that "or else…"
In 1990 promises were made, but they were not kept. September 11 was a day where we did not have the right to feel safe. In a frenzy to save ourselves, the U.S. alone has put 13 billion dollars into security. UNICEF quotes that, "This money would be enough to provide every child with food, so that no child, anywhere, ever goes to bed hungry." I feel that we should stop being so greedy. We are spending money on preventing terrorist attacks, and yet many children are under command of terrorists. Terrorists took over our sense of safety. They also take many children's basic needs. We need to first supply people with basic needs, and second to support the fight to prevent terrorism. Today's children are tomorrow's adults. The children in many foreign countries are growing up starving. These children will soon follow the path of terrorists because they will want revenge on those who watched them suffer without giving any help. We cannot ignore the constant cry for help any longer.
Most of the facts are sad. More than 10 million children under 5 still die of preventable causes every year. More than 100 million children (most of them girls) still do not attend elementary school. Millions of children are not registered and therefore do not even have a national existence. And millions of children are trapped in child labor, trafficking, and prostitution. But the facts are not all like that. Three million fewer children died of preventable causes last year than in 1990. Nine million newborns have been protected from significant learning disabilities by providing them with simple iodine salt. That prevents iodine deficiency disorder. Hopefully more progress can be made in these areas.
I think that we, as children, should be educated more on the state of the world's children. The government needs not to only give more money, but to also make it required for schools to teach a unit on children around the world. This project helped me to understand what goes on in the world. I have many friends who do not know about these rights. All of the friends that I hang out with have very privileged lives. We spend our time talking about movies, games and fashion. My friends do not know about the children that die of starvation, that children die of simple colds, and that some have never known a life without drugs and trafficking.
You can make a difference. You do not even need to donate any money. Use your spare time to learn about children's rights, and alert other of what is going on in the world of children. The majority of us refuse to see, or simply cannot see the horror of children dying. However, there are a few children's organizations that are struggling to help children around the world and make them a priority. You can volunteer your time to UNICEF. Or if you are too busy and want to make a donation, you can make one to UNICEF, or you can support a child for only a dollar a day through World Vision.
Don't ignore the obvious. Join us to answer the cry for help. Help us, so that all children are registered and have a national existence existence, so that no children go to bed starving, so that no child has to live with drugs. So that we, as children, can live our lives to the fullest, and the fullest part of our lives should be our childhood, because all children should be allowed to be totally carefree.
Bibliography
Salter, David. "Rights of children in short form". My convention.
http://www.hri.ca/children/youth/writeon/david/
"Unicef annual report on state of our children". State of the world's children 2002.
http://www.unicefusa.org/sowc2002/report.html