opinion

November 20 this year marks the 35th anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The convention, adopted in November 1989, stipulates that children have the right to special protection and assistance and should grow up in an atmosphere of happiness, affection and understanding and in family environment.

But many children in the world are groaning, suffering from all sorts of social evils, maltreatment and diseases.

Children are the targets of various kinds of violent crimes, maltreatment, flesh trafficking and forced labour.

 The US is the only country in the world that has not joined the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In the country, gun-related crimes are the first cause of child death and 4 752 children were killed by gun violence in 2021 alone.

In addition, the manpower exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) is prevalent in American society, and businesses are making huge profits by employing a large number of children they can work as much as they want while paying them much less than adults.

American newspaper The New York Times said that to their surprise, American citizens have come to know the fact that a very large proportion of the famous products familiar to them is made by child labour and that juvenile workers give up the idea of going to school in the daytime as they work all night.

In Japan it has become a social trend to maltreat children, regarding them as troublesome beings. The number of juvenile maltreatment cases reaches hundreds of thousands every year and parents are unhesitatingly killing or discarding their children, regarding them as useless beings.

Juvenile trafficking is getting ever more undisguised and about 28 percent of victims of flesh trafficking in the world are reportedly children.

Disputes and armed conflicts are the main cause of inflicting immeasurable pain and misfortunes on children.

In 2023, more than 11 600 children were killed or wounded due to armed conflicts in different parts of the world including the Gaza Strip of Palestine.

This is reportedly a 35 percent increase over the previous year.

An official of UNICEF said that children are more seriously affected by war than anyone else, urging the international community to take all measures for the protection of children. In particular, even if the battle is stopped in the Gaza Strip, the psychological injury of children cannot be healed, he said, calling for continuing to help them with their future life.

The prevalence of hunger, poverty and various infectious diseases has caused children more suffering than anyone else.

The food crisis sweeping the world has made 783 million people suffer from hunger with 150 million children undergoing trouble in growth due to malnutrition every year. In the Horn of Africa, 11 million children suffer from malnutrition, calling for humanitarian aid.

Fifty-nine percent of cholera infection cases in Somalia and 77 percent of pertussis cases in the Philippines were children under 5 in the first three months of this year. It is said that children were the main victims of measles, hand-foot-mouth disease, malaria and other infectious diseases spreading in other different countries.

It is an important issue related to the future of mankind to solve the problem of protecting children as soon as possible.