Despite significant socio-economic advancements in most countries over the globe, millions of children are still living without their basic human rights. Unfortunately, they are affected by violent attitudes, conflicts and destructive impacts of climate change.
In some regions, child rights are absolutely denied and childhoods are stolen by slavery. According to the estimates, approximately 800 million children are raised in fragile areas where abuse and exploitation are widespread. To avoid terrible consequences of this situation, governments and thought leaders must pay more attention to children rights protection.
From this article, you will learn about the most common problems related to child rights and why it’s really important to resolve them.
Why children rights must be protected
All children rely on adults as they are totally dependent human beings. They need nurture and guidance of caregivers to have their needs met and to gradually grow towards independence. Children are influenced by the government and their environment more than any other social group. In fact, they are extremely vulnerable to poverty, inadequate healthcare, malnutrition and air pollution. Hence, their interests must be considered by policymakers. It’s also important to note that healthy children development is crucial to the well-being of the whole society.
How children’s rights are violated
The violation of children’s rights is an acute problem nowadays. Let’s consider different aspects of this phenomenon.
Early marriage
The statistics on child marriage is just horrifying. Can you imagine that nearly every two seconds an under aged girl gets married? It means that approximately 12 million girls become wives by their 18th birthday each year. Even worse, child marriage typically forces girls to drop out of school and exposes them to different forms of violence, including physical, emotional and sexual. Alongside the denial of their rights, girls are driven into various experiences that their young minds and bodies are not ready for. They become mothers and need to take care of their babies when they are still children themselves.
Illegal labour
In extremely poor countries, millions of children are engaged in exploitative labour. Approximately 1 in 4 kids get involved in hazardous work. Naturally, it has a detrimental impact on their health, education and overall development. You can read more information about psychological and physical consequences of this global tendency at GradesFixer, which is a website that contains multiple essay examples on sociology. You can also learn from this platform that the most common cases of child labour include sex trafficking, domestic servitude, and hard physical work such as farming or mining.
Inaccessible education
Today, it is hard to imagine how one can have no access to education. But unfortunately, this is a reality of nearly 263 million children around the world who are currently out of school. The highest proportion of this number (about 130 million) is taken by girls aged 15-17. Proper education is a key to breaking the cycle of poverty in developing countries. Therefore, every child must have the opportunity to study and gain necessary life skills. However, not all children get the chance to reach their full potential because they face various barriers to learning, including long distances to school, lack of finances, local gender norms, and even early pregnancy.
Poor healthcare
Proper medical treatment is a basic need of all people. However, not all children are lucky to have access to high-quality healthcare. The statistics gathered in 2016 demonstrates that 5.6 million children under the age of 5 years died because of birth complications, asphyxia, diarrhoea, pneumonia and malaria. In other words, nearly 15,000 deaths per day occurred due to the lack of decent medical treatment. In fact, many of these tragedies could have been prevented in an adequate healthcare environment. Additionally, many girls under the age of 15 died due to pregnancy and childbirth complications caused by gender inequality in their countries.
Armed conflicts
Being separated from their families, thousands of children become soldiers in conflict areas. It may sound unbelievable but some of them participate in armed conflicts from the age of 8. They are displaced from their homes and have no access to education. Little boys are forced to endure the horrors of warfare that robs them of their childhoods. Besides, their mental health gets disrupted by the experiences they go through. Adequate psychological and emotional development are impossible in such circumstances, so children have few chances to grow as healthy individuals.
Final thoughts
Every child deserves the opportunity to thrive and be raised in protective communities free from violence. But unfortunately, even in the modern world, poverty and exploitation issues still arise. In both developed and developing countries, children are often mistreated and their rights are not respected. To help every individual flourish and reach their highest potential, we need to pay special attention to the protection of children’s rights. Each of us should make some contribution into resolving such social issues as early marriage, child labour, armed conflicts and lack of access to education and healthcare.
