Exploitation and Rights of Children

A child is considered a person who is below an age specified by the law as being an adult. Information contained in this report will help to provide a better understanding of children’s rights, what international declarations guarantee them, how they are violated and exploited and what can be done to defend and protect children and their rights.

What is a right?

Right: a privilege to which you are entitled to either by moral and customary beliefs or by the law.

Legal right: a right or privilege clearly given by the law. The law can give rights to human beings by simply not interfering with the rights everybody is entitled to, or by conferring them through common, statute, constitutional or international law. Considering the fact that the law cannot actually give human rights, it should not try to take them away.

United Nations Declaration of Human Rights: a document, which lists the rights to which every person is entitled. It has 30 articles, all of which outline a particular human right or set of rights. Two covenants make the rights listed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights enforceable. These are The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Children are entitled to all the human rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, however, they also need special protection and care from the adult world.

Exploitation of the child…

Exploitation: the Utilisation of another person or group for selfish purposes. For example forced child labour and child sex tourism. Exploitation of the child comes in many different forms.

The Problem: Many millions of children all over the world, but particularly those in third world countries such as Afghanistan and Taiwan, are exploited by people who completely disregard their rights and take advantage of their physical and mental immaturity. The unacceptable and harsh reality is that governments around the world have failed to ensure that the human rights of children are respected, protected and not violated.

Types of Exploitation of the child include:

Forced child labour in hazardous, unhealthy and extremely difficult jobs

Child soldiers, Child sex tourism for eg; Taiwan, Child trafficking, forced prostitution, rape, torture, kidnapping and imprisonment in inhumane conditions, separation from families, abandonment and neglect.

Discrimination due to race, ethnicity, disabilities or disease

Sexual and physical abuse, assault or harassment in schools by teachers and peers who discriminate against and violate the right’s of the child.

Facts and Statistics on occurring child exploitation…

Child exploitation occurs in countries all over the world including countries such as Romania, Egypt, China, Russia, Thailand, Taiwan, India, Africa and even the United States of America. For example children suffer ill treatment in Chinese, Russian and Romanian orphanages, there is violence against school children in Kenya and South Africa, and children experience brutality in juvenile correctional centres in Jamaica, Pakistan and the USA.

There is still the use of children as soldiers in countries such as Burma, Colombia, Liberia and Uganda. Amnesty International has reported that over 300,000 children are forced to fight in armed forces in more than 40 countries. At least 60 governments, including Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the USA, continue to legally recruit children aged 16 and 17.

Forced child labour such as farm work in extremely hazardous or unhealthy environments is still occurring in places such as Egypt, Ecuador, El Salvador and the USA.

Children also suffer exploitation in the form of discrimination; especially those affected by HIV/AIDS in Kenya and India.

 Child sex tourism has become a major business in Asia. It violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child promise of the right of the child to protection from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. Child sex tourism involves men travelling to Asia to have sex with children and countries where it is occurring include Burma, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia and Vietnam. In Thailand it is a major problem as more than 800,000 girls aged 12 to 16 are involved. If even younger girls and boys are taken into consideration then over one million children could be involved in this horrific exploitation. The Thailand government is failing to protect children from this sexual exploitation, as it is a good way to make money for the tourism industry.