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The International Convention on the Rights of the Child, (ICRC), a collateral victim of Covid-19 ?

 By Deborah Liebart, in collaboration with Marco Manca. First appeared on DisputatioMagistrorum. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4896280

Licensed under the CreativeCommons BY-NC-SA 4.0





At a time when European deconfinements are taking place, the economic repercussions of the health crisis are on everyone’s mind, I would like to focus on the issue of children’s rights largely undermined, as well, by the covid-19 than by the resulting economic crisis.

The pandemic has created considerable threats to children, their safety, well-being, education, future and fundamental rights jeopardized, with little regards for their recognition by the International Convention on the Rights of the Child1, (ICRC), (54 articles), ratified by 196 UN member countries. Since the unanimous adoption of the text by the General Assembly, political leaders have pledged to build a world fit for children …

By adopting the ICRC, States really recognize the child as a person, with high vulnerability, a human being to be protected whose healthy development is crucial for his own future, as individual, but also for the future of the society. The ICRC is legally binding. It was the first time that an international convention instated an explicit recognition of minors as bearers of social, economic, civil, cultural and political rights, non-negotiable fundamental rights : right to have an identity, a nationality2, a sufficient and balanced diet3, the right to education4, right to be protected from all forms of abuse and exploitation5, from all forms of violence, whether physical or moral/psychological6, but also the right to have decent living conditions, to have access to information7, to express oneself, to participate8… the right to be heard and to be listened to9…, living with dignity, in accordance with the fundamental principles of non-discrimination and with the main principle of the best interests of the child10… The ideal is noble, nevertheless, without precise metrics and without a binding time horizon with a real deadline, one can wonder if the text is not ultimately just a « white washing ». What does it look like today, thirty years later and a pandemic later ?

First of all, let’s have a look at some numerical studies.

1. The number of homeless children continues to increase in Europe11. In 2019, in Paris, every evening, 700 children with their families called on 115 (emergency number), without obtaining accommodation and living on the streets or in precarious housing12. Due to the lack of emergency structures for mothers and children, in Paris, it is sometimes the hospitals that are overwhelmed by requests13.

2. At least 18,000 unaccompanied child migrants have disappeared after arriving in European countries including Greece, Italy and Germany14.“The high number of missing children is a symptom of a child-protection system that doesn’t work,” “criminal organisations are increasingly targeting migrant children,” “especially unaccompanied ones and many of them become victims of labour and sexual exploitation, forced begging and trafficking” said Federica Toscano, head of advocacy and migration at Missing Children Europe15.

3. Child soldiers and children in war zones : in 2019, more than 10,000 children were killed or maimed, a decrease from 12,014, in 2018, the deadliest countries for children being Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen. One in four children has been killed or maimed by explosive remnants of war (ERW), improvised explosive devices (IED) or landmines, underscoring the responsibility of parties and governments in securing and eliminating these deadly weapons. The number of children abducted, including for the purposes of recruitment and sexual abuse, rose from nearly 2,500 in 2018 to nearly 1,700, the highest number having been verified in Somalia, DRC and Nigeria. Overall, millions of children have been deprived of education and health care as a direct result of the attacks, due to school closures and / or misuse or military use16.

4. Every year, at least 12 million girls are married before they reach the age of 18. This is 28 girls every minute17.

5. In 1990, 12.5 million children died before the age of 5, 5.2 million in 2019, while projections for 2020-2030 are close to 50 million deaths under the age of 5, across the world. Million children died mostly from preventable or treatable diseases, hence the importance of developing and sustaining access to quality care18. That’s why UNICEF19 and United Nations20, advocate for universal health coverage for every child while the pandemic has disrupted healthcare systems in the poorest countries, thus endangering the health of the youngest, as well as the development of malnutrition due to the increasing poverty, a malnutrition leading to lowered immunity…. Today, the sanitary context challenges the world to apply barrier gestures even though almost half of the world population does not have access to safe water at home…

Last but not least, in 2017, 50,000 women were killed worldwide by an intimate partner or a member of their family21,a domestic violence that exposes both women and children22. To have exact data is almost impossible, because the word « feminicide » does not appear in all the dictionaries or penal codes of the countries. In 2018, the United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report stated, moreover, that « the home is the most dangerous place for a woman23« . The table « Intentional homicide victims by victim-offender relationship and sex – number and rate for the relevant sex group », sheds light on the European situation24.

The list of violations committed against the ICRC is long, and the pandemic inevitably worsens the situation in the world…

However laws exist25, legal procedures exist, allowing children to lodge a complaint for violation of their rights with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child26.

Every child has the right, (regardless of his status as a national, migrant or refugee), to receive specific care up to the age of 18, by specialist doctors, the pediatricians. Access to pediatrics which is becoming increasingly difficult, in France27.

Thanks to the ICRC, it is now prohibited using corporal punishment28 in 62 countries, including within the family home, while 27 have undertaken to change their legislation29, the ICRC, (art.19), affirms that « States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child30« . The Council of Europe calls for Europe to become a corporal punishment-free zone31.

However, the daily press shows how difficult it is to enforce these legislative texts on a daily basis, more are still out of line with the law… So, in reality, still today, in many countries, and despite the Convention, it is much more a theoretical rejection of « ordinary domestic violence »…

Thirty years in, children’s rights is far from being achieved both in the world, in Europe and in France, and the pandemic has only reinforced inequalities across the world and further weakened the most vulnerable. Before the pandemic, one in five children lived below the poverty line and 10% of the global population lived on less than a dollar a day. Globally, 150 additional million children plunged into poverty due to Covid-1932, and 1.6 billion have seen their schooling affected by lockdowns and restrictive isolation measures linked to the spread of the virus33. If in European societies the educational delay to be made up seems almost anecdotal by comparison, in some countries, the massive de-schooling of girls, in particular, looks like a point of no return34.

What is more worrying in France is the increase in violence against minors, by ascendants, during the first lockdown, while schools were closed, a significant increase of 50% in violence against minors under 5 years old35. Violences that take place in the private sphere but which should in no way be a matter of private life. This is not an educational issue, this is not family privacy, or parent’s right to educate. Since the adoption of the law against “ordinary educational violence”36, (although difficult to argue before institutions), violence against children has become a major public health problem that concerns all citizens, because violence experienced during childhood can lead to violence in adults if it is not recognized and properly taken care of. In other words, the violence suffered by the child at an early age can lead to an increase in violence, against oneself or against others in society37.

How can children be protected from adult conflicts, ascendancy violence, human trafficking, sex tourism, forced marriages38 and mass de-schooling ? Perhaps already by listening to them, simply39… In a world in which children aged 6 are asked to be responsible and to protect elderlies against the virus by applying barrier gestures and social distancing, (in other words by making them grow up much faster than the previous generation), it does not seem unreasonable to think that one could hear their voices when they themselves are victims of some form of violence and/or injustice… This “Law of silence”, which exists in all Social-Professional Categories, (SPC), says more about taboos of our society and the difficulty of adults to recognize the child as holder of rights, a being with abilities of thinking, suffering, speech-enabling, understanding… The issue of incest is one of the symptoms of this “Law of silence” created by adults, of these societal taboos which prevent the child’s speech, because we know that in most cases victim speaks, with his/her own child words… According to the associative world, 10% of the French population, (mainly women, the aggressors being 9 times out of 10 men40), declare to have been victims of incest, even though the term has only entered the penal code in 2016, becoming an aggravating circumstance and not a crime in itself41. Far from being a private issue, it is a real public health problem, with which the public authorities have now the legal obligation to deal with, due to the adoption of the ICRC.

It is now a question of giving ourselves the means to reorganize our system so that it protects the victim and not the aggressor as is still too often the case, in France, in cases involving children and adults, since the fiasco of the Outreau trial42. For a miscarriage of justice, how many children are locked in silence ? The traumatic consequences of sexual abuse are widely known today43. It is necessary to set up a global public health policy dedicated to this social problem. A strong, proactive policy which protects the child. Once and for all, we must recognize in the first instance that a child is never consenting44, that children are always victims. This question of consent is a bogus argument, one of the shame of our societies.

A second solution at national scale would also be to strengthen the governance of childhood through interdisciplinarity, by bringing together under the responsibility of a single super-ministry the issues related to children and their protection, by adopting a holistic strategy of operational, multidimensional and global management of the childhood : education, protection, healthcare.

A public policy that values children but also the development and strengthening of units taking care of child victims45.

At the international level, we must provide ourselves with active and strong structures capable of dealing with this problem : on the same model as the international tribunal in The Hague, it could be envisaged to create operational mega-structures able to intervene wherever and whenever is necessary46. We must protect children, but also the status of children. It is our duty as adults, a moral, civic, and legal duty.

Today, we must recognize, we parents, citizens, that the world in which children evolve has become a « deviant world » in which even our school educational models based on social competition engender problems47 of violence and rejection of otherness. The cycle of violence is everywhere : physical violence, moral violence, social violence… We need to rethink the education system in a post-pandemic and « polytrauma world » hit by a large-scale and polymorphic crisis.

One solution could be to reintroduce culture and creativity on a massive scale into our educational models in order to develop the culture of cooperation rather than the culture of competition48.

How could we imagine rebuilding a post-covid world without focusing on the issue of the children’s rights ? How could we rebuild without thinking about our future ? It is not a matter of saying that the world will suddenly collapse, but to say that thinking again about these questions in depth, would probably help to develop the resilience of our societies across from future threats, and more than that, we could hope that the crisis could help us to develop our “antifragility”, our capacity not only to resist and continue in the same way, but a way to better our society facing adversity : antifragility being defined « as a convex response to a stressor or source of harm (for some range of variation), leading to a positive sensitivity to increase in volatility (or variability, stress, dispersion of outcomes, or uncertainty, what is grouped under the designation “disorder cluster”), whereas fragility is  » defined as a concave sensitivity to stressors, leading to a negative sensitivity to increase in volatility49.” Risk management must be to anticipate and prepare for events at the margins, by taking them into consideration in the models but also by playing on the global environment in order to mitigate the potential consequences for the world, and in particular for children, citizens of tomorrow to whom we have the responsibility to leave a world, the one we will have decided to build and pass on to them, like passers-by of stories and History.

2 Convention on the Rights of the Child, art. 7.

3 Id., art. 27.

4 Ibid., art. 28.

5 Ibid., art. 32.

6 Ibid., art. 34.

7 Ibid., art.17.

8 Ibid., art. 14.

9 Ibid., art.12.

10 Ibid., art. 1.





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