Realising the Rights of Young Children: Progress and Challenges

This edition of the Bernard van Leer Foundation's flagship journal, Early Childhood Matters, marks the 20-year anniversary of the signing of the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). It features articles discussing various aspects of the CRC and General Comment 7 (GC7) on implementing child rights in early childhood.

An introductory section of the journal identifies 4 key concerns addressed by GC7; communication-related elements include:

1. GC7 holds that the young child must not only be regarded as a rights-holder in an abstract sense, but that he or she must be accepted as an active participant in the routine processes of daily life. "Without the child's contribution, no interaction of the child with other persons can be established, and no relationships can emerge....Every attempt to find out the best interests of the child must be confirmed by paying attention to the child so as to capture the views and feelings the child expresses in verbal and non-verbal ways."
2. GC7 draws attention to the fact that the young child has the ability to communicate views. "Young children use gestures and facial expressions, laughter and tears to express messages about their interests and wishes, to share their joy and excitement and to communicate their fears and worries....Thoughtful, sensitive persons must listen to and seek to comprehend and respond to the demands and emotional states of the child because the survival, well-being and development of the child depend on the child's integration through interaction with others."
3. GC7 stresses that young children must rely on others who have a responsibility to ensure that children are provided with opportunities to acquire skills, learn about their own talents, and realise their unique potential. "Young children need support, communication, shared understanding and guidance....Their surroundings cannot provide this encouragement if the children do not receive sufficient attention from caring persons, if their physical needs are not met, if their cognitive capacities are not challenged, if their emotional security is not ensured, or if they are not integrated within a network of social relationships in which they can play an active role..."
4. GC7 underlines the fact that governments, public services, and persons who live and work with children all share the duty to establish the proper conditions so that children can realise their potential. "This will require a sound institutional and social environment that allows interested individuals and groups to combine their efforts in favour of young children."

"The appointment of a children's rights commissioner who has been vested with the mandate to monitor progress could help substantially to enhance respect for children and their well-being, development and prospects."

Contents of this journal edition include:

• Editorial
• An Introduction to General Comment 7: A Framework for Young Children's Rights
• "Slow, but Steady Progress": An Interview with Lothar Krappmann
• Children's Rights and the Roma
• Supporting Children's Rights in an Emergency
• Article 31: A 'Forgotten Article of the UNCRC'
• Is My City or Community Child-friendly?
• Promoting Young Children's Rights through the Development of Sustainable Education for Key Professionals
• CCCria: Where Rights Are Taken Seriously!
• Promoting the Rights of Young Children in India
• The Early Childhood Rights Indicators
• News from the Foundation
• Further Reading

An excerpt from the Editorial follows:

"...Few people were more involved with the development of gc7 than our keynote interviewee, Lothar Krappmann,...a member of the Committee on the Rights of the Child since 2003. He gives...an overview (p. 5) of what impact the crc has had so far, and explains the challenges faced by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in ensuring that public understanding of children's rights keeps pace with the changing nature of childhood.

 We then move on to Eastern Europe and the plight of young children from the Roma minority. Their relatively low level of participation in education is often viewed as an issue of human capital development - but as the International Step by Step Association (p. 12) explains, viewing the issue instead through the prism of children's rights shows it in a very different light, especially the unlawful discrimination embodied by segregated schools for Roma children.

...With examples from Haiti and Gaza, Save the Children (p. 18) depicts how an appreciation of children's rights brings a new perspective to emergency relief work. With the use of Child-Friendly Spaces in emergency zones becoming more common, attention is now turning to defining how emergency relief agencies can most effectively meet the rights of the very young children.

...On p. 24 the International Play Association focuses on...article 31 [of the CRC], which deals with...the right to free play - that is, play initiated and controlled by children and undertaken purely for pleasure (its own sake), rather than play structured by adults with learning goals in mind....Finding appropriate spaces for play is just one of the many challenges of meeting children's rights in urban environments, the subject of our next article (p. 29). unicef's Child-Friendly Cities initiative is helping both citywide authorities and, increasingly, local communities to make urban environments responsive to children's rights...

...For children's rights to be realised in practice depends on the understanding of a diverse range of professionals, from doctors and social workers to the police and judiciary....On p. 36 [the authors] describe the progress of efforts in Tanzania to put together an early years training curriculum for professionals, drawing out some early lessons learned.

Realising children's rights also depends on recognising children as capable of participating actively in decisions affecting them, even from a young age. Our next contribution (p. 42) describes how this has been made a reality in a slum area of Rio de Janeiro through the creation of a Centro Cultural da Criança (Child Cultural Centre) where children aged 2 to 10 can gather get together...to draw, read, dance, sing, play instruments, use computers and socialise.

...On p. 49 chetna, a long-standing partner of the Bernard van Leer Foundation in India, describe how they go about popularising the concept of child rights in their own particular cultural context...

Our final contribution (p. 53) returns squarely to the difficulties of measuring progress in implementing the crc and gc7 by addressing the question of indicators....The Early Childhood Rights Indicators Group is engaged in putting this right."