Nepal’s children entitled to rights enshrined by ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’: UNICEF

Dr Suomi Sakai, Representative of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) has said the children of Nepal have the same entitlements as children of other countries to the rights enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989, is a set of standards adopted by countries for the protection and well-being children.

The central premise of the Convention is that anyone below 18 years of age is a child and has the right to special care and protection and this right to special care and protection applies to all children in all countries, and at all times. It is not a right that can somehow be diminished or whittled down due to conflict or natural disasters afflicting a country.

Dr Sakai said that UNICEF has been assisting the Government to make progress in many of the areas under the Child Rights Convention particularly with regard to children’s rights to education, health, nutrition and protection.

Dr Sakai also noted that signing the Convention was only the first step for countries. The Convention then required them to analyse their laws and procedures to ensure that they did conform to its international standards concerning children. Countries also needed to report regularly to the Committee on the Rights of the Child on their progress.

Nepal, which signed the Convention in 1990, had made its last report to the Committee in May 2005 and the Committee had in return responded in June with a series of what were called ‘Concluding Observations’ about this report.

“The Committee, while noting a number of positive changes in terms of legislation, ratification of conventions, and development of national plans, also noted what it called ‘the extremely negative impact’ on children by the armed conflict in Nepal,” said Dr Sakai.

“The Committee noted that ‘the climate of fear, insecurity and impunity resulting from the armed conflict and the state of emergency’ had had a ‘seriously negative physical and psychological impact on the sound development’ of Nepal’s children,” she said.

Dr Sakai also informed that the Committee had also urged the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to respect child rights within the areas under which it operated.

At the same time, the Committee had reminded the government, as a state party to the Convention, of its obligation to respect the Convention at all times and not to derogate from any of its provisions, even in exceptional circumstances. It had recommended strengthened measures to combat impunity with regard to violence against children. nepalnews.com pb Nov 20 05