Celebrating a quarter century of Child Rights

Nov 20 is an important day for children. Twenty-five years ago, at the largest gathering of world leaders at that time, an international convention was adopted at the United Nations that transformed the way we think about children. The way we legally treat them. The way we perceive them. And the way we act to meet their needs.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child was a watershed moment when world leaders agreed that all children had rights. They became our youngest citizens entitled to a set of fundamental services and protection that is the responsibility of every government to uphold and safeguard. It was an accumulation of more than a decade of advocacy and lobbying among governments, civil society and development actors for it to finally come into being.

As the first international treaty to articulate the entire complement of rights - economic, social, cultural, civil and political - relevant to children, it is legally binding on all countries that have ratified it, and with its 194 state parties, it is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history.