Are children a threat? – Article by Eleni Mavrou, AKEL Political Bureau member

 

21 November 2021, “Haravgi” newspaper

On 20 November 1989, the international community marked the 30th anniversary of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

On the same day, the General Assembly of the UN adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the first international legal text to establish specific and separate children’s rights.

The Convention, signed by almost all UN member states (with the notable exception of the USA), includes provisions on the right to life, survival and development, the right to a name and nationality, the right to protection from all forms of exploitation. It stresses that the freedom children need to develop their intellectual and moral potential possibilities demands, inter alia, a healthy and safe environment, access to medical care and the provision of a basic level of food, clothing and shelter.

Yet reality makes a mockery of the Convention. Ongoing conflicts, the climate crisis, the policies promoting less state intervention, are leading to despair or the marginalisation of millions of people. It is the children who are first and foremost the victims.

Millions of children die every year from hunger or from preventable diseases. Millions of children have lost their homes and families in wars. Millions of children work under harsh conditions for a living.

And don’t think that these are all “third world” phenomena. Approximately 10% of children aged 5-17 years across the European Union are working. 44 US states allow the marriage of children- young girls usually. More than 26 million children in Europe are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. In Cyprus, one child is sexually abused every 27 hours – and these are only the children who dared to speak out. One child commits suicide every 11 minutes!

Furthermore, it is also the children who are often forgotten.

Children with disabilities are often, in Cyprus too, denied their rights to education, protection, health care and social inclusion, because the necessary special infrastructures are inadequate or because small and meagre amounts of funds are allocated.

Children and often their families flee their countries to escape being recruited in armies/militias, child marriage and the consequences of war. We are talking about children who walk 12 to 14 hours through mountains, with snow up to their waists, to cross borders or to get into a makeshift old boats, paying smugglers a lot of money to get to a place where they will find safety. Children like the ones we are holding in the concentration camp that has been set up in Pournara.

The pandemic has made the situation even worse. It’s hard for food aid to reach countries in dire need. Subsequent restrictive measures have trapped children in abusive environments, away from places where they could report abuse and seek help. The number of families struggling to cope is increasing.

It has been said that: “For the system, old age is a failure, but childhood is a threat”. Have we reached the age when humanity has turned its back on its own future?