A
View of Children in a Global Age – Concerning the Convention of Children´s
Rights
Teruhisa Horio
I Introduction.
In November 1989, the “Convention on Rights of the Child” was adopted
by the United Nations, and procedures for ratifying it are steadily moving forward
in every country. In
It was 1900 when Ellen Key wrote her book, The Century of the Child. In the century that has passed since then, we have seen the Geneva Declaration of 1924, followed by the UN Declaration of Children’s Rights in 1959, and have at last reached the stage of an international global convention, the implementation of which is an obligation for the government of every country.
Three important points are a necessary requirement for understanding the significance of this treaty.
Firstly, it is a fact that the infringement of children’s rights is spreading on a global scale.
Secondly, even though the circumstances concerning children are sufficiently urgent to require immediate attention, if a perspective which sees this problem as an infringement of rights is not properly established, the problem is likely to be dismissed with such expressions as “ What a shame “.
It is therefore important to note that it is the large-scale development of a “rights ideology“, embracing the problem of the infringement of children’s rights, that provides the supporting backup for this treaty.
Thirdly, it is the United Nations which has become the main agent and which has established an international treaty for the protection of children’s rights. In short, what we are at last now seeing is the common acceptance by the world at large of the globally oriented view that without the extension to all countries of thinking on a global scale, and without global acceptance of the need to strive for the realization of the ideas embodied in the UN Convention, we will not reach a solution to the problems we face.
In the following sections, I would like to elaborate these points in rather more detail.
II The state of the children of the world.
The severest infringement of the rights of children today is taking place in the countries of the third world, namely Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The White Paper on Children of the World reports that every week some 40.000
children die in conditions of poverty and hunger, and a total of 500 million
children are facing starvation. The conditions in the countries of Southern
Asia, including
It is in the face of facts such as these that opinions can be heard to the effect that the problem of a treaty for children’s rights is a problem affecting the children of the Third World.
To go on from this, however, and say that there is therefore no problem in the advanced countries, is a grave error.
In the report that UNICEF issued in advance of the 1990 World Children’s
Summit, while repeatedly stressing the harsh position of children in the so-called
Third World, it also made the following comments: “xxx For example, in
America and Britain too, thanks to 10 years of steady economic growth, the number
of homeless families has doubled. In
In 1979, 11% of the child population was in this category, but today the figure
has risen to over 15%. Figures of this kind sow that over 10 years, in the
same way as in developing countries, there have been grave offenses against
the principle of giving priority to children”. The spreading problem
of homelessness among the low groups in America has been widely publicized on
Japanese television, and at the same time that the Charter of Children’s
Rights was being adopted in the UN General Assembly, the report of a special
committee on children, young people and families was being presented to the
Senate. In this report, a detailed account was given of American children who
had been “thrown away”. Behind the image of the world power,
III
The situation of the children of
What then is the position in
However, even in
When I subsequently learned, after talking to teachers and parents, that the Board of Education had sent the pupils concerned to Kazenoko Gakuen, I felt I wanted to say that the incident was the result of the contemporary, group-oriented attitude of discarding children like so much unwanted baggage. This year too, there was an incident in which some handicapped junior high school pupils were kicked to death. There seems to be no end to the stories of pupils who live in fear of physical punishment by their teachers. Each one of these incidents represents a violent infringement of children’s physical freedom and their right to live. Unfortunately, Japanese society and Japanese education are caught up in the web of the principle of competitiveness, and although nothing can be seen on the surface, there are very many cases where deep in their hearts, children have excluded everything and everyone else, while suffering because they have repressed their own feelings and individuality. They are being robbed of an environment in which they are free to develop and expand their natural potential. It’s no exaggeration to say that the children of Japan are the hostages of the disease of modern civilization.
While the circumstances and the way in which these manifest themselves may therefore differ from culture to culture, it is certainly true to say that the infringement of children’s rights is a world wide phenomenon.
IV The development of the ideology of children’s rights.
It is also true to say that in recent years the way of looking at and interpreting the infringement of rights has undergone a major development. The concrete content of the rights of children is set out in very specific detail from Clause 1 to Clause 41 of the Children’s Rights Charter.
I do not intend in this paper to comment separately on every one of these individual rights. Each separate clause in the Charter is of course important, but it is also very important to get a comprehensive, intuitive image of what sort of thing children’s rights in fact constitute. Part of the process for acquiring this image and a precondition for becoming aware of children’s rights is a deepening of awareness of human rights in general. More specifically, it is necessary to recognize that children too are human beings, and as human beings are the possessors of rights. From our present-day perspective, this may seem a self-evident truth, but it is by no means so long ago that it was first recognized as such. Indeed, as recently as the 17th century, the great philosopher, Pascal, held the view that children were not human beings.
Going further back in time, from ancient times until the middle ages, the prerogative whether to let children live or die was among the rights held by the head of the household (bringing children up by killing them). With the advent of a Christian society in the middle ages, the killing of children decreased, and instead the practice grew up of discarding them (bringing children up by discarding then). It was in pre-modern times that the concept and ideology of human rights at last began to take root and that, as represented by the French Revolution, we can see society moving toward a citizen’s revolution. With this kind of revolutionary feeling as the backclok, we can see an increasing awareness of “human rights”, and in principle, the concept of rights of children as human beings is thereby established.
However, in practice, the concept of “human beings” within the phrase “all human beings have rights as human beings” does not include women or children, workers or slaves. This is also borne out by the fact that the English word “man” and the French word “homme” denote a human being and at the same time an adult male. One could also say that 200 year period between the declaration of human rights and the present day represents a process of social confirmation of the fact that “women too are human beings”, “children too are human beings” and “workers too are human beings”.
Also, at the same time as it was confirmed that “children too are human beings”, there was also a deepening realization that “children are also children”. Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseaus was termed the “discovery of children”. It was in this book that Rousseau said that people did not know what a child was and had many misconceptions regarding this concept. In this way, he propagated an image of children that was different from that held by adults. “Man is born a weakling”, said Rousseau, and for that reason, the warm consideration of those around him is a necessity.
However, this weakness also contains the flexibility required for rich and vigorous growth, and it was Rousseau’s book that demonstrated that this very weakness concealed the potential for development, and showed that children’s immaturity should be reevaluated in terms of this potential.
Rousseau said that nature expects that children will be children before they become adults. It this order is overturned, he said, the result will be forced fruit, which will have no maturity or savor and which will quickly go bad. In other words, he continued, we would be left with “young savants and aged children”. As Rousseau’s words indicate, there are stages in the development of children, and the true implication of the “discovery of children” is this emphasis that sacrificing the present stage of childhood for the future stage of adulthood risks impoverishing that future stage and turning it into something alien. Children are not “miniature adults” or “immature adults”, and it is their very immaturity that denotes their potential for development. Indeed, this potential is also something that transcends the existing capabilities of adults.
Rosseau also said that while people take pity on children, if we bad not all been children in the beginning, the human race would have long sine died out. Children are the furure hope of mankind. It is also worthy of note that it was around the time of the publication of Emile that the view or image of children held by society slowly began to change. This is the time when children’s wear began to appear as a distinctive form, and when children who featured in paintings were portrayed as childlike beings. A detailed account of the social history of children at this time can be found in Philippe Aries` book The Birth of the Child.
In the world of literature, we can find in the works of Wordsworth and William Blake poems celebrating childhood. In Victor Hugo’s words to the effect that “Columbus discovered America. But I discovered childhood”, we can also disern arise in the status of children in society at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. It is with trends of this kind as the background that attention began to be directed toward the question of distinctive rights for children, whereby at the time of childhood children should be enabled to lead full lives in a manner appropriate to children play in the most spontaneous form of activity and is also a form of learning.
It was Emile in Rousseau’s book who said that “children begin to learn from the moment they are born”. Learning is a discovery based or enquiry based activity, carried out by the child and denoting a gradual opening up of its own world.
It follows that at the core of “children rights” is “the right of children to be children”, and that the preservation of this right is the securing of a temporal and spatial structure in which children can feel and think like children. This securing of a distinctive, child-oriented structure is very different form the kind of thinking that in one vound would treat children in exactly the same way as adults.
It is of course a fact that children are in “a state of existence that will soon become adulthood”. This does not, however, simply mean that they will draw closer to the adults of today, but rather that they have the potential to transcend and go beyond the current limitations of adults at the time in question. Condorcet, the French thinker and educationist active at the time of the French Revolution, expressed this as the “right of the new generation” to transcend earlier generations. Placing a high value on childhood in terms of those rights that are peculiar to children also means recognizing that children pass through this age to become new adults. Children are indeed in a state of development that is future-oriented. It is not the case that for the sake of preparing for the future, we must sacrifice the present, but rather that a truly fulfilling present is the key to de possibility of a rich and abundant future.
It is clear from the above that included in the preconditions for thinking about children’s rights are questions about what children are. It is also clear that from the standpoint expressed by such phrases as “children are also human beings”, “children are also children”, and “children are in a stage of existence that is open to the future”, it is very important that the eyes with which we look at children should themselves be full of potential.
V Development.
When we say that “Children are developing in a future-oriented direction”, how should we interpret the concept of “development”?
For example, we use the term “development” in “development check”.
Since one can tell, by looking at a development check chart, who is “advanced” and who is “behind”, this concept is likely to inspire feelings of fear in many people. However, this is not the meaning of the word “development”.
A word that could be placed in contrast to, and in some ways in opposition to development is “progress”. Implicit in the idea of historical progress, from a closed state through one of half-openness to the opening up or flowering of civilization, is the image of everything moving forward in a straight line. However, since pre-modern times, this word has been avoided and the word “development” come to be used instead. Development does not imply that everything moves forward in linear progression, but rather that things move and change in a series of repeated zigzag movements, with stumbles, setbacks and reverses as well as sudden leaps forward. The image is one of a larva becoming a pupa or chrysalis, and then a fully grown image.
When we look at children and education too, we see that children pass through stages when they seem to go backwards, stumble and encounter repeated failures before taking great leaps forward. What is important is that this is the kind of image we have of development. From the moment of birth until the moment of death, everyone passes through many different stages of continuous development. Each stage of development is associated with a particular kind of activity or significance, and it is the task of education to safeguard that activity or significance. Fulfilling the potential of one stage also provides the motive power to facilitate the leap forward to the next stage. At the present time, parents and teachers alike are only concerned with forcing the pace and getting children to move forward more and more quickly. The result of this is that while the number of “young savants or aged children” increases. The development of childlike children is not safeguarded. Furthermore, it is very important, if the leap forward seems to be a long time coming, to have the ability to sit and wait. Because people develop through a process of zigzag movements, an instrument like a development check chart may be one indicator, but it is not something that can be applied uniformly to all cases.
Three important factors that support children’s development are nature, interpersonal relationships and culture. If human beings are cut off from nature, they cannot survive. Also without interpersonal relationships with other people such as parents and friends, they will never become full human beings. Children’s development is also a “development of relationships”, and it is important that relationships between adults and children as well as among children themselves should be rich and fulfilling.
In addition, people live within a cultural framework, beginning with everyday things such as food and clothing and extending to music, written materials and other cultural artefacts. It is necessary for there to be humanistic cultural influences and stimulation corresponding to each stage of development. At the same time as learning from culture, children also develop by creating and producing a child culture.
VI The content of children’s rights.
Up to this point, this paper has discussed what children are and what sort of thing is meant by children’s development. However, when talking about children’s rights, one can say that a precondition is that they have rights as human beings, and that in addition they have rights as children and the right to develop into adults. Within the overall context of human rights, the most fundamental right is the right to live (the right to life and the right to existence). The process of living in turn signifies activity.
Within the context of children’s rights too, the foundation is the right to live. With this as the basis, bearing in mind Rousseau’s words that “children begin to learn from the moment they are born”, as far as children are concerned, the activity of learning is an indispensable part of living. Children develop through this learning activity. The right to learn is closely linked to the right to enjoy the process of human growth and development.
However, to interpret this right to learn simply as “studying in school” or “receiving education” would be a grave misinterpretation. The obligation to guarantee the right of development and learning rests in the first instance with parents and families; their obligations are soon supplemented by those of preschool institutions and schools.
Important factors in this context are the pattern of society and the pattern of welfare. The expression of “the right to receive education” is enshrined in the Constitution of Japan, and on the basis of this fact, many people quote this right as one element in the repertory of children’s rights as a whole. However, I personally think it is very important to guarantee the more fundamental “right to development and learning”. And if one accepts that form a set age, as a necessary part of this development and learning, children should be entrusted to the institution called a school, it is likely that parents, acting on behalf of their children, will make demands on the education provided, will criticize it if they find it strange, and on occasion will reject it. Children too, when they are taught in a way that they do not understand, have a right to make themselves heard and demand to be taught in a way that they do understand. At work here too is the right of children to express an opinion (Convention on Rights of the Child, Clause 12). With this in mind, the customary expression, “the right to receive education”, should be reformulated as “the right to education”.
VII Children`s rights and human rights
In the light of the above, we can say that the ideology of children’s rights, in terms of preconditions for an ideology of human rights, is ones developmental form. However, this does not mean that we need go no further than talking about the application of human rights to children (or to women).
The recognition of children as the possessors of human rights is a necessary precondition, and with this as a basis, those rights that are distinctively peculiar to children should be emphasized. In practice, this means no more than emphasizing the general foundation of human rights. If the rights of children to learning and to full and satisfying development in the age of childhood as well as the right to education are not guaranteed, then the significance of the right to work or the right to vote is reduced by half.
The English poet, Wordsworth, coined the expression “the child is father to the man”, and indeed it is the realization of the rights of children that lends firmness and stability to the rights of adults and that constitutes the foundation that should in turn be a source of strength that makes the implementation of those rights into a living and working reality. It is in this sense that we can see that children’s rights are the base and foundation of human rights.
Focussing our gaze more closely on children’s rights of this kind also means not simply generalizing about human rights on the basis of adult models alone, but being prepared to make a close scrutiny of specific phases of human rights appropriate to each stage of development and each life cycle stage, and to delve deeply into the contents of rights in each phase. These phases can be expressed as the rights of children, the rights of young people, the rights of mature adults, and the rights of the aged, while human rights can be expressed as the entirety of all these phases, including the contents of rights particularly appropriate to each phase.
The close focussing referred to above also means adopting a perspective of reevaluating the human rights situation of those concerned with the implementation or guaranteeing of children’s rights. If the human rights of parents, guardians and educators, and beyond these, of society in general, are no safeguarded, it will be quite impossible for children’s rights to be safeguarded in isolation. For this reason too, questioning the form of children’s rights is equivalent to questioning the form of human rights in that society. Moreover, the state of the former constitutes an excellent barometer for measuring the state of the latter. In this way, a perspective on children rights can become a trigger to help to develop the fullness and richness of the ideology of human rights as a whole.
VIII A view of children in a global age.
In conclusion, we must widen our perspective beyond the frontiers of one country. It is our duty to turn our gaze on the world as a whole, and to consider on a global scale the desirable form of human rights and policies for implementing them. Unless global democratization is made a reality, there is no hope for the future of human civilization. Over the 30 years from the “Declaration of Children’s Rights” in 1959 to the convention of Children’s Rights” in 1989, we have seen a gradual deepening of the principle of best interests of the child. The safeguarding of this principle and the realization, within the political circumstances of each country, of the principle of “children first” is closely correlated with the development of the ideology of children’s rights and human rights, which in turn is linked to a re-examination of what form human civilization should take. In conclusion, I would like to quote the words of Prime Minister Carlson of Sweden as spoken at the Children’s Summit. He said:
“Children are the future of us all. It is the way in which children live that determines the whole of human civilization. How children’s rights are safeguarded will decide our futures”