Innovation can drive change for deprived children — UNICEF

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (commonly abbreviated as the CRC or UNCRC) in 1989 as a human rights treaty which sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children. The Convention defines a child as any human being under the age of 18.

GeNations that ratify this convention are bound to it by international law. Compliance is monitored by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child which is composed of members from countries around the world. Once a year, the committee submits a report to the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly which also hears a statement from the CRC chair and the Assembly adopts a Resolution on the Rights of the Child.

Child-specific needs and rights

The Convention deals with the child-specific needs and rights. It requires that states act in the best interests of the child. This approach is different from the common law approach found in many countries that had previously treated children as possessions or chattels, ownership of which was sometimes argued over in family disputes.

On 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), has called for an urgent action to prevent millions of children from missing out on the benefits of innovation. Connectivity and collaboration can fuel new global networks to leverage innovation to reach every child, according to the children’s agency.

The State of the World’s Children Report – Reimagine the future: Innovation for every child, calls on governments, development professionals, businesses, activists and communities to work together to drive new ideas for tackling some of the most pressing problems facing children – and to find new ways of scaling up the best and most promising local innovations.

The report is a crowd-sourced compilation of cutting-edge innovations and an interactive platform that maps innovations in countries all over the world and invites innovators to put their own ideas ‘on the map’. 

UNICEF executive director 

“Inequity is as old as humanity, but so is innovation – and it has always driven humanity’s progress,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake.  “In our ever-more connected world, local solutions can have global impact – benefiting children in every country who still face inequity and injustice every day. 

“For innovation to benefit every child, we have to be more innovative – rethinking the way we foster and fuel new ideas to solve our oldest problems,” said Lake.  “The best solutions to our toughest challenges won’t come exclusively either from the top down or the grass roots up, or from one group of nations to another. They will come from new problem solving networks and communities of innovation that cross borders and cross sectors to reach the hardest to reach – and they will come from young people, adolescents and children themselves.”

In many jurisdictions, properly implementing the Convention requires an overhaul of child custody and guardianship laws, or, at the very least, a creative approach within the existing laws. The Convention acknowledges that every child has certain basic rights, including the right to life, his or her own name and identity, to be raised by his or her parents within a family or cultural grouping, and to have a relationship with both parents, even if they are separated.

Ghana was the first country to ratify the Convention and followed it up with the enactment of the Children’s Act, 1998 “to reform and consolidate the law relating to children, to provide for the rights of the child, maintenance and adoption, regulate child labour and apprenticeship, for ancillary matters concerning children, generally, and to provide for related matters”.

Among other things, the Act stipulates that the best interest of the child shall be paramount in any matter concerning a child and also says that “No person shall subject a child to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment including any cultural practice which dehumanises or is injurious to the physical and mental well-being of a child”.

Advancing child rights

Since the adoption of the CRC, there has been tremendous progress in advancing child rights – with a huge reduction in the numbers of children dying before the age of five and increased access to education and clean water.  

Despite this achievement, the rights of millions of children are violated every day, with 20 per cent of the world’s children dying before their fifth birthday, almost one in four children in the least developed countries engaged in child labour, and millions of children regularly experiencing discrimination, physical and sexual violence, and abuse and neglect.  

On the 25th anniversary of the CRC, the latest edition of UNICEF’s flagship report argues that innovations such as oral rehydration salts or ready-to-use therapeutic foods have helped drive radical change in the lives of millions of children in the last 25 years – and that more innovative products, processes and partnerships are critical to realising the rights of the hardest to reach children.  

UNICEF has ,therefore, prioritised innovation across its network of more than 190 countries, setting up hubs around the world, including in Afghanistan, Chile, Kosovo, Uganda and Zambia to foster new ways of thinking, working and collaborating with partners and to nurture local talent.