By NNN-Bernama,
Beijing : This year’s Universal Children’s Day shall be remembered as a milestone, not only because the Convention on the Rights of the Child celebrated its 20th birthday, but because it raised global awareness on child rights protection through historic joint media efforts, according to a report Friday by China’s Xinhua news agency.
In the kaleidoscopic world that we call home, few issues can make all people see eye to eye with each other. Child rights protection is one of them.
As the Convention on the Rights of the Child reached its “coming of age,” it won near-universal acceptance after having been ratified by 193 countries, making it the most widely endorsed human rights treaty in history.
Today, the universal efforts on child rights protection have been further cemented by the global media’s joint action to accept their social responsibility and play a bigger part in championing children’s rights.
For the first time, more than 800 world media organisations, regardless of their cultural and regional identities, simultaneously focused their attention on the world’s children, as the blue logo of the Global News Day for Children appeared on numerous TV screens, newspapers and web pages.
This is an unprecedented media campaign co-sponsored by Xinhua and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and features a 24-hour global live multimedia coverage of the event.
The event has prompted the international community to set its eyes on children. It also reminded the world that it owes its young citizens the best it has to give.
Certainly, no one can deny the outstanding achievements that have been made globally in realising child rights, with about 70 countries having incorporated relevant codes into national legislation.
Globally, the number of under-five deaths among children was reduced from 12.5 million in 1990 to less than 9 million in 2008, while the number of children being deprived of a primary school education was reduced from 115 million in 2002 to 101 million in 2007, according to a special edition of UNICEF’s flagship report, the State of the World’s Children.
But if we regard the progress already made as a complete victory, we are aiming very low. Poverty, hunger and conflicts still beset many children’s day-to-day existence, a sobering fact that warns the world that much remains to be done.
For example, 500 million to 1.5 billion children have been affected by violence, and 150 million children between the ages of five and 14 are engaged in child labour, UNICEF reported.
To make matters worse, the double whammy of the global financial crisis and climate change threatens to further undermine the already hard lives of underprivileged children, especially in the least developed countries.
That is why UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the international community to improve the lives of children across the world.
“Too many children, they do not have access to even primary education. Too many children, they are exploited and abused. And still too many children are recruited as child soldiers. This is totally unacceptable,” Ban told Xinhua in a recent interview.
“We must prevent this,” he said. “They are the future of our world.”
Now, international media are looking towards the future. Now, they are joining hands to champion child rights protection. And now, they are issuing a clarion call to improve children’s living conditions and ensure their healthy development.
Shouldering their responsibility to improve public welfare, the more than 800 world media organisations have made a joint effort to paint a true picture of children’s hardships, to convey children’s wishes and aspirations and tell the world about the pursuits and dreams of its young citizens.
On this same day, global media focused on the same theme.
They didn’t shy away from exposing the physical and mental scars of child soldiers, child labourers, and other child victims. At the same time, however, they depicted a better world — a world in which the best interests of children are a primary concern of all.
By doing so, world media not only added a significant new chapter to the annals of the global endeavour to protect children’s rights, but also broke new ground in international media cooperation.
In fact, the joint media efforts resound with the agreements reached at the World Media Summit in October, where world media organisations stressed social responsibilities and cooperation amid challenges in the new era.
With the media’s growing influence, “it is more important than ever before that the media should establish and uphold social responsibilities,” Chinese President Hu Jintao stressed at the summit.
Indeed, as the world pays more attention to children’s welfare through the cooperation of world media, the international community will make even more efforts to reach those children who are still being deprived of their rights to survival, development, protection and participation. Thus, they will give the world’s young citizens a better tomorrow. There is no better legacy.