Universal Children’s Day also known as World Children’s Day is celebrated on the 20th November 2021. The day commemorates the Declaration of the Rights of the Child by the United Nations General Assembly. This commenced on the 20th November 1959. In some countries, the rights of children are celebrated throughout the week.
The Origins of World Children’s Day
Here in the United Kingdom we began to celebrate World Children’s Day in 1954. The day is designed to encourage all involved in the lives of children to promote a mutual exchange and a level of understanding about the needs of children throughout the world and to initiate action to benefit and promote the welfare of all children worldwide.
World Children’s Day is also an important day in the calendar of those who support human rights and children’s rights. At Advanced CCA we are clear that that World Children’s Day should not be overlooked and the rights of all children are fundamentally important.
In the millennium World Children’s Day took a proactive role in addressing the spread of HIV and Aids throughout the Third World by 2015.
UNICEF takes a leading role in promoting and enhancing the fundamental rights of children. It delivers vaccines, works with policy makers to promote good health and education and works exclusively to assist children and protect their human rights.
In 2012, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, led the initiative for education of children throughout the world. This was to promote children’s education and identity and to enable them to attend school and to improve the skills that they would acquire within education. With the changing political structure in Afghanistan it only seeks to demonstrate why such a development continues to be necessary. It underlines the need for World Children’s Day to be actively promoted and celebrated.
Why World Children’s Day is Important
We should remember that children’s lived experiences throughout the world varies enormously and there is a vast difference between the experiences that First World children have and Third World children endure and suffer.
Whilst here at Advanced CCA we work with children and families who have been subject to all forms of abuse and neglect within the UK, there are many children throughout the world who experience violence, exploitation, discrimination within their home countries. The safeguards that are enshrined within family law in the UK are not universal. Children are discriminated against. They are used as labourers in some countries. They are immersed in armed conflict. Some children are living on the streets and are heavily discriminated against by virtue of their gender, religion, sexual orientation or disability.
Children throughout the world are displaced as a result of war and famine. It is a sobering thought to know that about 153 million children are forced into child labour, including slavery, child prostitution and child pornography.
Whilst it is easy to be critical of family law structures and processes here within the UK, we should all pause to consider the needs of children throughout the world, many of whom have little or no voice or say.
As adults we should remember the universal joy, happiness and enlightenment that children bring to us in our personal lives, our professional lives, our wider communities and throughout the world.
Here at Advanced CCA we do all that we can to promote the needs and the voice of children in all that we do.
