Rome, Feb 3: Pope Francis convened a high-level summit Monday to demand that children be protected from war, forced labour, trafficking and exploitation, throwing his moral authority behind a global initiative to uphold children’s fundamental rights despite the Catholic Church’s own poor record in protecting them from sexual abuse.
Queen Rania of Jordan opened the summit, recalling that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights convention in history but is hardly enforced on an equal plane.
Italian Sen. Liliana Segre, a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor, told the gathering that she was denied the right to education when Italy’s fascist-era racial laws went into effect in 1938.
Segre has spent her life teaching today’s youth about antisemitism and the need to not look away when injustices occur, and has paid the price. “I am the oldest woman in the world with a police escort and am insulted and threatened, despite not having done anything,” she said.
Francis, for his part, listed the tragic summary of plights facing hundreds of millions of today’s children: conflicts, homelessness, trafficking and compulsory marriage. He also referred to the 150 million stateless or “invisible” children who were not registered at birth or have no documents when they migrate. “This is an obstacle to their accessing education or health care, yet worse still, since they do not enjoy legal protection, they can easily be abused or sold as slaves,” he said.
He cited Myanmar’s Rohingya children, as well as the undocumented migrants crossing the US-Mexican border. “Those first victims of that exodus of despair and hope made by the thousands of people coming from the South towards the USA, and many others,” he said.
Several speakers cited the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN treaty ratified by 196 countries which sets out the fundamental rights all children enjoy, including the right to life, nationality, freedom of thought and religion, health and education. It calls for signatories to take all appropriate measures to protect children from harm and to put children’s interests above all else. (PTI)
