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Google celebrates Universal Children’s Rights Day today with a doodle. Instead of the classic company logo, on the main page of the search engine there is a drawing that shows children playing with origami, to commemorate 31 years since the approval of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
On November 20, 1989, the United Nations General Assembly in New York approved the first legally binding treaty affirming the rights of all children. In Italy, the provision was ratified two years later.
The Convention fundamentally changed the way children viewed from a legal point of view. They became subjects of rights and stopped being a simple object of protection and protection. A number of new concepts were added to universally recognized rights such as names, survival, health and education. The Convention, in fact, recognizes the child’s right to a legal identity, to respect for their privacy and their freedom of expression.
When it was approved, analysts and observers defined the Convention as one of the most important achievements of international law in the last years of the 20th century. By officially recognizing children as individuals, and thus at the same level as all other components of society, the treaty gave many countries the tools and incentives necessary to change their legal systems and pass laws aimed at greater protection. of minors. . It led to the creation of laws to prohibit corporal punishment, the creation of juvenile justice systems distinct and separate from those of adults, and the establishment of control and verification systems for the effective protection of children. Many jurisdictions also passed laws to more effectively penalize parents who abandon or abuse their children.
In the 23 years since the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, significant progress has been made in protecting children around the world, but much remains to be done. Numerous associations and observers on minors note that many of the principles of the Treaty have not been applied to date. Every year, tens of millions of children around the world do not have the opportunity to live their childhood in peace: many are forced to work and do not go to school. Specific articles of the Convention, such as the one on the right of the child to be an active part in the decisions that concern him (article 12) and the one that establishes that the guiding principle of any decision must be “the best interests of the child” (article 3 ), are not respected in practice in many countries that have ratified the Convention over time.
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