Britney Spears concerts and sparkly nail polish are hardly the only signs that children are growing up faster these days. In some parts of the world, they actually run banks, stage labor strikes and lobby for better health care. Over the past decade, organizations like the Bal Sabha have been springing up to give children more control over their lives. Spurred on by the global child-rights movement, they have gained clout under the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), ratified by 191 nations, which commits governments to protecting children’s basic rights–including full participation in family, social and cultural life. Next week children’s right to be heard on decisions affecting them–Article 12 in the CRC–will be on display at the United Nations. During a special session, children will address the General Assembly for the first time. Kids from 101 countries have registered as delegates, and will discuss issues ranging from poverty to AIDS.
Can–and should–children advocate for themselves? Throughout most of history, the young have been regarded as society’s most powerless and vulnerable members, in need of adult protection. But increasingly children are becoming politicized actors with agendas of their own. “Children are in a similar position to women 20 years back,” notes Save the Children’s Bill Bell. “Traditionally, they’ve been marginalized and invisible. Because they don’t have the vote, governments have to make an effort to listen to them through consultation.”
Already the movement is bringing about change. In 1993 an Indian bureaucrat burned a 15-year-old servant so badly he died. After the official was charged only with attempted murder, Bal Sabha kids took to the streets. Delhi’s chief minister heard them out, and had the man charged with murder; today he’s serving a life sentence, and government officials are barred from employing child servants. To show they’re letting kids have their say, governments from Botswana to Britain have started children’s commissions or units to consult young people. And increasingly, NGOs are meeting with children to discuss local issues that affect them–such as where to build a school. “Article 12 is about trying to inform decisions with children’s own experience,” says Bell. “It’s respectful of the fact that they are human beings.”
Not everyone agrees that children are their own best advocates. As one critic noted, the battle lines have been drawn: on one side are “kiddy libbers,” who want to free children from the oppression of adults. On the other: “kiddy savers,” intent on saving children from a dangerous world. Among the kiddy savers are trade unionists and activists who argue that organizing child laborers under the CRC is counterproductive because it legitimizes child labor. “If [child labor] is not totally eliminated, employers will just keep on hiring children,” says R. S. Chaurasia, director of the Delhi-based South Asian Coalition Against Child Servitude. “There’s no halfway house.”
On the other side of the political spectrum, conservatives argue that children’s rights undermine parental rights. With the exception of Somalia, the United States is the only country of the United Nations’ 193 member nations not to have ratified the convention. In part, this reflects traditional American skittishness about signing international treaties. But it’s also a sign of the power of a “small but vocal minority that believe children’s rights reduce parent rights,” notes UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy. One conservative American Web site thundered that the CRC would lead to “backtalk and blasphemy… propaganda and pornography, cults and covens, idleness and iniquity.” Others insist merely that children are incapable of handling key decisions themselves: “The concept of a child’s right to have a voice in policymaking and to serve as a miniature adult is absolutely ridiculous,” says Janice Shaw Crouse, senior fellow at the right-wing Beverly LaHaye Institute and a former speechwriter for George Bush Sr. “It is exploitative.”
To be sure, children have long been exploited in pursuit of their “best interest.” When a group of South African parliamentarians consulted some HIV-positive children on health policy, one invited the cameras in–without considering the stigma that such photos would carry. Some child psychologists urge caution in making children testify in family court against their wishes. Child psychologist Kathleen Cox, who writes expert opinions for the British courts, recalls talking to a 7-year-old witness. “He said he didn’t think it was up to him to make the decision,” she recalls. “He wanted adults around him to accept their responsibility as adults.”
There may be a happy medium. Child-rights activists acknowledge that there is a big difference between a 7-year-old and a 14-year-old, and that as children mature, they should be encouraged to take more responsibility. The key to making Article 12 work, they say, is to give children training and follow-up on expressing their views–and to make the adults in their lives more sensitive to their needs. Slowly, that’s happening. Recently Joan van Niekerk of the South African charity Childcare was charged with asking a 15-year-old Zulu girl, who heads a family of AIDS orphans, to attend a conference on Children and the Media in Greece. Van Niekerk refused. “It would have been exploitative to yank a young girl out of her home, expect her to speak for South African children and then just plonk her back again,” she says.
Most important, both sides agree, is remaining realistic about what children can achieve. “There must be clarity on what their testimony means,” notes child-development advocate Judith Jenya. “Children don’t set policy, governments do.” Indeed, dashed expectations led a group of Afghan children to send a message to the United Nations this week: “Though you have come and heard our stories many times, we do not see anything changing for us,” they wrote. “And we do not know what you are doing with our stories.” In the end, listening to stories is one thing; acting on them is quite another.
