{"id":20238,"date":"2011-03-23T21:19:56","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T04:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/humanium.org\/en\/"},"modified":"2017-10-04T12:55:12","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T12:55:12","slug":"declaration-rights-child-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.humanium.org\/en\/declaration-rights-child-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1959"},"content":{"rendered":"

Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1959<\/span><\/h1>\n

About the Declaration<\/h2>\n

In 1959, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child<\/a>. It marked the first major international consensus on the fundamental principles of children’s rights.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Origin of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child<\/h3>\n

\"\"In 1924, the League of Nations (LON) adopted the Geneva Declaration<\/a>, a historic document that recognised and affirmed for the first time the existence of rights specific to children and the responsibility of adults towards children.<\/p>\n

The United Nations (UN) was founded after World War II. It took over the Geneva Declaration<\/a> in 1946. However, following the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights <\/a> in 1948, the advancement of rights revealed the shortcomings of the Geneva Declaration, which therefore had to be expanded.<\/p>\n\n

“Several [UN] Member States were calling for a convention, that is, an international tool that would legally bind the States that had ratified it, but this proposal was not adopted.\u201d [our translation – to check] (1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They thus chose to draft a second Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which again addressed the notion that \u201cmankind owes to the Child the best that it has to give.\u201d<\/p>\n

On 20 November 1959, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child<\/a> was adopted unanimously by all 78 Member States of the United Nations General Assembly in Resolution 1386 (XIV).<\/p>\n

Content of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child<\/h3>\n

\u201cThe child is recognized, universally, as a human being who must be able to develop physically, mentally, socially, morally, and spiritually, with freedom and dignity.\u201d [our translation] (1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, neither the 1924 Geneva Declaration<\/a> nor the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child<\/a> define when childhood starts and ends, mainly to avoid taking a stand on abortion.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the Preamble to the Declaration of the Rights of the Child <\/a>highlights children’s need for special care and protection, \u201cincluding appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Declaration of the Rights of the Childlays down ten principles (2):<\/p>\n