Rights of the Child

A/RES/65/197No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 64aPromotion and protection of the rights of children, published in 2011.

What other versions does this mandate have?

23 versions · 2003–2025

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/80/190

2025A/RES/80/190Rights of the childLatestCompare with previous version
2023A/RES/78/187Rights of the childCompare with previous version
2022A/RES/76/147Rights of the childCompare with previous version
2020A/RES/74/133Rights of the childCompare with previous version
2019A/RES/73/155Rights of the childCompare with previous version

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2011.

2011A/66/230Status of the Convention on the Rights of the Child report of the Secretary-General

Identified automatically from the metadata in each report’s UN Digital Library catalogue record.

What does this mandate say?

82 operative paragraphs

I.Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocols thereto

Reaffirms paragraphs 1 to 8 of its resolution 63/241 of 24 December 2008, and urges States that have not yet done so to become parties to the Convention on the Rights of the ChildError: Reference source not found and the Optional Protocols theretoError: Reference source not found as a matter of priority and to implement them fully;

Commemorates the tenth anniversary of the adoption of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography and the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict, welcomes the efforts of the Secretary-General to promote the universal ratification of the Optional Protocols, and takes this opportunity to call for the effective implementation of the Convention and the Optional Protocols by States parties to ensure that all children may fully enjoy all their human rights and fundamental freedoms;

Calls upon States parties to withdraw reservations that are incompatible with the object and purpose of the Convention or the Optional Protocols thereto and to consider reviewing regularly other reservations with a view to withdrawing them in accordance with the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action;Error: Reference source not found

Encourages States parties, in implementing the provisions of the Convention and the Optional Protocols thereto, to take duly into account the recommendations, observations and general comments of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, including, inter alia, general comment No. 7 (2005) on implementing child rights in early childhood;

Welcomes actions of the Committee to monitor the implementation by States parties of the Convention, and notes with appreciation its actions to follow up on its concluding observations and recommendations, and in this regard underlines, in particular, the regional workshops and the participation of the Committee in national-level initiatives;

Takes note of the process of the elaboration of an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to provide a communication procedure complementary to the reporting procedure under the Convention on the Rights of the Child;

II.Promotion and protection of the rights of the child and non-discrimination against children

Non-discrimination

Reaffirms paragraphs 9 to 11 of its resolution 63/241, and calls upon States to ensure the enjoyment by children of all their civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights without discrimination of any kind;

Registration, family relations and adoption or other forms of alternative care

Also reaffirms paragraphs 12 to 16 of its resolution 63/241, and urges all States parties to intensify their efforts to comply with their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the ChildError: Reference source not found to protect children in matters relating to registration, family relations and adoption or other forms of alternative care, and, in cases of international parental or familial child abduction, encourages States to facilitate, inter alia, the return of the child to the country in which he or she resided immediately before the removal or retention;

Welcomes the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, contained in the annex to its resolution 64/142 of 18 December 2009, as a set of orientations to help to inform policy and practice, and encourages States to take them into account;

Economic and social well-being of children, eradication of poverty, right to education, right to enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and right to food

Reaffirms paragraphs 17 to 26 of its resolution 63/241, paragraphs 42 to 52 of its resolution 61/146 of 19 December 2006, on the theme of children and poverty, and paragraphs 37 to 42 of its resolution 60/231 of 23 December 2005, on the theme of children living with or affected by HIV/AIDS, and calls upon all States and the international community to create an environment in which the well-being of the child is ensured, including by strengthening international cooperation in this field and by implementing their previous commitments relating to poverty eradication, the right to education, and measures to promote human rights education, in accordance with the evolving capacities of the child, the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including efforts to address the situation of children living with or affected by HIV/AIDS and to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV, the right to food for all and the right to an adequate standard of living, including housing and clothing;

Recognizes the threat to the achievement of the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals, posed by the global financial and economic crisis, which is connected to multiple, interrelated global crises and challenges, such as the food crisis and continuing food insecurity, volatile energy and commodity prices and climate change, and calls upon States to address, in their response to these crises, any impact on the full enjoyment of the rights of children;

Elimination of violence against children

Reaffirms paragraphs 27 to 32 of its resolution 63/241 and paragraphs 47 to 62 of its resolution 62/141 of 18 December 2007, on the theme of elimination of violence against children, condemns all forms of violence against children, and urges all States to implement the measures set out in paragraph 27 of its resolution 63/241;

Encourages all States, requests United Nations entities and agencies, and invites regional organizations and civil society, including non-governmental organizations, to cooperate with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children and to provide support, including financial support, to her for the effective and independent performance of her mandate, as set out in resolution 62/141, and in promoting the further implementation of the recommendations of the United Nations study on violence against children, while promoting and ensuring country ownership and national plans and programmes in this regard, and calls upon States and institutions concerned, and invites the private sector, to provide voluntary contributions for that purpose;

Notes with appreciation the consolidated partnerships promoted by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, in coordination with national Governments, United Nations agencies, human rights bodies and mechanisms and representatives of civil society and with the participation of children, as well as the organization of an expert consultation on child-sensitive counselling, complaint and reporting mechanisms, held in Geneva on 30 September and 1 October 2010;

Recalls Human Rights Council resolution 13/20 of 26 March 2010 entitled “Rights of the child: the fight against sexual violence against children”;

Promoting and protecting the rights of children, including children in particularly difficult situations

Reaffirms paragraphs 34 to 42 of its resolution 63/241, and calls upon all States to promote and protect all human rights of all children in particularly difficult situations and to implement programmes and measures that provide them with special protection and assistance, including access to health care, education and social services, as well as, where appropriate and feasible, voluntary repatriation, reintegration, family tracing and family reunification, in particular for children who are unaccompanied, and to ensure that the best interests of the child are accorded primary consideration;

Children alleged to have infringed or recognized as having infringed penal law and children of persons alleged to have infringed or recognized as having infringed penal law

Also reaffirms paragraphs 43 to 47 of its resolution 63/241, and calls upon all States to respect and protect the rights of children alleged to have infringed or recognized as having infringed penal law, as well as children of persons alleged to have infringed or recognized as having infringed penal law;

Prevention and eradication of the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography

Further reaffirms paragraphs 48 to 50 of its resolution 63/241, and calls upon all States to prevent, criminalize, prosecute and punish all forms of the sale of children, including for the purposes of the transfer of organs of the child for profit, child slavery, commercial sexual exploitation of children, child prostitution and child pornography, with the aim of eradicating those practices and the use of the Internet and other information and communications technologies for these purposes, to combat the existence of a market that encourages such criminal practices and take measures to eliminate the demand that fosters them, as well as to address the needs of victims effectively and take effective measures against the criminalization of children who are victims of exploitation;

Calls upon all States to develop and implement programmes and policies to protect children from abuse, commercial sexual exploitation, child prostitution, child pornography, child sex tourism and child abduction, and calls upon States to implement strategies to locate and assist all children subject to these violations;

Also calls upon all States to enact and enforce necessary legislative or other measures, in cooperation with relevant stakeholders, to prevent the distribution over the Internet and in all other media of child pornography, including depictions of child sexual abuse, ensuring that adequate mechanisms are in place to enable the reporting and removal of such material and that its creators, distributors and collectors are prosecuted as appropriate;

Children affected by armed conflict

Reaffirms paragraphs 51 to 63 of its resolution 63/241, condemns in the strongest terms all violations and abuses committed against children affected by armed conflict, and in this regard urges all States and other parties to armed conflict that are engaged, in contravention of applicable international law, including humanitarian law, in the recruitment and use of children, in patterns of killing and maiming of children and/or rape and other sexual violence against children, as well as in all other violations and abuses against children, to take time-bound and effective measures to end them, and urges all States, United Nations agencies, funds and programmes, other relevant international and regional organizations and civil society to continue to give serious attention to, and to protect and assist child victims of, all violations and abuses committed against children in situations of armed conflict, in accordance with international humanitarian law, including the First to Fourth Geneva Conventions;

Also reaffirms the essential roles of the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council and the Human Rights Council for the promotion and protection of the rights and welfare of children, including children affected by armed conflict, notes the increasing role played by the Security Council in ensuring protection for children affected by armed conflict, and also notes the activities undertaken by the Peacebuilding Commission, within its mandate, in areas that promote and contribute to the enjoyment of the rights and welfare of children;

Notes with appreciation the steps taken regarding Security Council resolutions 1539 (2004) of 22 April 2004, 1612 (2005) of 26 July 2005 and 1882 (2009) of 4 August 2009 and the efforts of the Secretary-General to implement the monitoring and reporting mechanism on children and armed conflict in accordance with those resolutions, with the participation of and in cooperation with national Governments and relevant United Nations and civil society actors, including at the country level, requests the Secretary-General to ensure that information collected and communicated by the monitoring and reporting mechanism is accurate, objective, reliable and verifiable, and in this regard encourages the work and the deployment, as appropriate, of United Nations child protection advisers in peacekeeping operations and political and peacebuilding missions;

Child labour

Reaffirms paragraphs 64 to 80 of its resolution 63/241, on the theme of child labour, and calls upon all States to translate into concrete action their commitment to the progressive and effective elimination of child labour that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development, and to eliminate immediately the worst forms of child labour;

Notes with interest the outcome of the Hague Global Child Labour Conference, including the Road Map for Achieving the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour by 2016;

Calls upon all States to take into account the report of the Director-General of the International Labour Organization entitled “Accelerating action against child labour”;

The right of the child to express his or her views freely in all matters affecting him or her

Reaffirms paragraphs 24 to 33 of its resolution 64/146, recognizing the right of the child to express his or her views freely in all matters affecting him or her and giving those views due weight in accordance with his or her age and maturity, and urges all States to implement the measures set out in paragraph 33 of its resolution 64/146;

III.Implementing child rights in early childhood

Recognizes that early childhood encompasses all stages of a young child’s life until and during his or her transition to school;

Reaffirms that the child is the holder of all rights enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the ChildError: Reference source not found and that early childhood is a critical phase for the realization of these rights;

Recognizes that parents and, when applicable, legal guardians and members of the extended family have the primary responsibility for the protection, upbringing and development of children, including in early childhood, and that the State and the community as a whole should provide appropriate support and assistance to parents, families, legal guardians and other caregivers;

Reiterates that all States should continue to make their best efforts to ensure the recognition of the principle that both parents have common responsibilities for the upbringing and development of their children;

Also reiterates that all public and private institutions, as well as all those responsible for the care or protection of children, should respect children’s rights, including during early childhood, taking into account the best interests of the child;

Recognizes that the full realization of children’s rights requires the adoption and implementation of comprehensive policies and programmes at the national and local levels for all children, including specific programmes for early childhood;

Also recognizes that, during early childhood, children have particular physical and emotional requirements and are especially dependent on parents and, when applicable, legal guardians and other caregivers to offer protection, and are more vulnerable to disease, trauma and violence, including neglect, injury, maltreatment and abuse, including physical and mental violence, and other obstacles to their development, and are entitled to special protection measures and the opportunity to progressively exercise their rights in a manner consistent with their evolving capacities;

Reaffirms that the eradication of poverty is essential to the achievement of all the Millennium Development Goals and to the full realization of the rights of all children, including in early childhood, and expresses deep concern that malnutrition and preventable diseases continue to be major obstacles to the realization of rights in early childhood, in particular the right to life and the right to food, and to the ability of the child to develop, and also recognizes the need to reduce child mortality and ensure comprehensive child development;

Emphasizes that good maternal health, including physical and mental health, nutrition and education are essential for the full realization of all rights of the child, including in early childhood, for the survival of children and their ability to develop and to reach their full potential;

Recognizes that discrimination against and exploitation of children, including in early childhood, harm their quality of life and may reduce their survival prospects, and calls upon States to take all appropriate measures to ensure that the child is protected against all forms of discrimination and exploitation;

Also recognizes that, in ensuring the exercise by children, including in early childhood, of their rights, States shall respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community, as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for the child to provide, in a manner consistent with the age, maturity and evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance;

Further recognizes that a child who is temporarily or permanently deprived of his or her family environment, or in whose own best interest cannot be allowed to remain in that environment, is entitled to special protection and assistance provided by the State, and calls upon States to ensure adequate alternative care for such a child in accordance with their national laws, preferably in the form of family-based care;

Recognizes that the right to education is closely linked to the maximum development of the child and that the goal of formal and non-formal education shall be to empower the child, including in early childhood, by developing his or her skills, ability to learn, self-esteem and self-confidence, and that this must be achieved in ways that enable children to learn through play and experience and reflect the rights and inherent human dignity of the child;

Acknowledges the need to enhance efforts aimed at expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, as determined in goal 1 of Education for All, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, taking into account the evidence that good-quality early childhood care and education, both in the family and in more structured programmes, have a positive impact on the survival, growth and development of children and on their ability to learn;

Welcomes the first World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education, held in Moscow from 27 to 29 September 2010, convened by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and encourages Member States to study its outcomes and recommendations;

Calls upon all States to include, within the overall context of policies and programmes for all children within their jurisdiction, appropriate provisions for the realization of the rights of children in early childhood, in particular:

To ensure that the rights of the child are fully respected, especially in early childhood, without discrimination on any grounds, including by adopting and/or continuing to implement regulations and measures that ensure the full realization of all their rights;

To provide special support and assistance to children in early childhood who are suffering from discrimination or living under especially difficult circumstances, in order to ensure their physical and psychological recovery and social integration and the full realization of their rights within an environment that encourages dignity and self-respect;

To adopt, implement and strengthen appropriate policies aimed at ensuring universal access to quality and affordable services, especially health, nutrition, education, welfare, social protection, safe drinking water and sanitation and other services that are essential for the child’s well-being, and, in this regard, to pay particular attention to the most vulnerable children and those living under especially difficult circumstances;

To strengthen efforts towards poverty eradication, including for families with children in early childhood, so as to help to ensure the realization of their right to an adequate standard of living;

To take measures to improve prenatal, perinatal and post-natal care for mothers and newborns, reducing infant, child and maternal mortality, such as improving the access to health-care systems, including for sexual and reproductive health, emergency obstetric and newborn care, the distribution and use of insecticide-treated nets, vaccination campaigns, the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and the strengthening of international cooperation and technical assistance urgently required in developing countries to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity and improve maternal and newborn health;

To strengthen efforts significantly towards the goal of universal access to comprehensive prevention programmes, treatment, care and support to prevent the spread of the HIV epidemic and alleviate and control the detrimental impact of HIV/AIDS on children and including by taking all appropriate measures to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, to provide timely, accurate diagnosis and effective treatment, including antiretroviral therapies and to ensure adequate alternative care and psychosocial support for children who have lost parents or other primary caregivers to HIV/AIDS;

To strengthen national and international efforts to improve the accessibility to and availability of safe, affordable, quality and effective medicines, including innovative and generic, in particular for the treatment of children in early childhood;

To ensure that community and civil society institutions, services and facilities responsible for early childhood comply with national quality standards, especially in the areas of health and social protection, and to develop training programmes to ensure a quality, suitable and well-trained workforce in these areas;

To take all necessary measures to ensure that the child will be registered immediately after birth and will have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents, and to implement these rights in accordance with their national law and their obligations under the relevant international instruments in this field;

To make all possible efforts to promote universal access to birth registration, ensuring an effective, flexible and accessible system of registration;

To take appropriate measures to ensure the full realization of the right to education on the basis of equal opportunity for every child, including by providing accessible, free and compulsory primary education directed to the development of the personality, talents and mental and physical abilities of the child to his or her fullest potential, and to improve coordination between primary education, early childhood care and education services to ensure a better transition to primary school;

To develop care and educational networks for early childhood with necessary regulations and appropriate quality, and to ensure that parents, in particular working parents, legal guardians and other caregivers are provided with appropriate support in order for their children to fully benefit from such programmes, especially the poorest, most vulnerable and marginalized children;

To support quality childhood development programmes, accessible to all children, including in early childhood, through home- and community-based programmes;

To promote greater understanding and recognition that childcare is a critical societal function and should be equitably shared between women and men within the family and households;

To promote and expand comprehensive early childhood care and education strategies which acknowledge a key role for parents, legal guardians and the extended family as well as the contribution of organized programmes of early childhood education provided by the State, the community or civil society institutions, including private education institutions;

To consider formulating and implementing, at the appropriate level, comprehensive early childhood care and education policies, to enhance information and training for parents and other caregivers on quality childcare and on understanding their role in children’s early education, and to promote training of professionals working in areas related to early childhood education;

To take effective measures to allow indigenous peoples to have non-discriminatory access to all levels and forms of education provided by States, and to promote access for indigenous individuals, particularly children, to education in their own language, when possible, as addressed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;

To ensure that young children with disabilities have equal opportunities to participate fully in education and community life, including the removal of barriers that impede the realization of their rights, and to foster at all levels of the education system, including all children from an early age, an attitude of respect for the rights of persons with disabilities;

To take decisive steps to develop strategies for children, including in early childhood, regarding human rights education, on values such as respect for human dignity, non-discrimination, equality, justice, non-violence, tolerance and peace, at home, in childcare centres and in early education programmes, in order to promote the awareness and empowerment of children with respect to their rights and responsibilities, taking into account the World Programme for Human Rights Education;

To address the root causes preventing children, including in early childhood, from exercising their right to be heard and to be consulted, in accordance with their evolving capacities, on matters affecting them, to inform children, parents, legal guardians, other caregivers and the general public about the rights of the child, and to raise awareness, including through partnerships with civil society, the private sector and the media, while being attentive to their influence on children, of the importance and benefits of the participation of children in society;

To adopt measures to promote and protect the right of the child, including in early childhood, to rest and leisure, and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts, including measures that allow him or her to engage in play and age-appropriate recreational activities, such as sports;

To strengthen efforts to effectively eliminate child labour which is harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development;

To develop strategies for the prevention and elimination of all forms of violence against children, including in early childhood, by adopting appropriate policy measures aimed at, inter alia, raising awareness, capacity-building for professionals working with and for children, supporting effective parenting programmes, fostering research, collecting data on the incidence of violence against children, including in early childhood, and developing and implementing appropriate national monitoring tools to periodically assess progress;

To take steps to design and implement preventive and comprehensive anti-bullying measures, including in educational settings, that address bullying and peer-directed aggression during early childhood, which could include the training of early childhood educators and family members and also raising awareness of this matter among children;

To develop or enhance early childhood programmes targeted at assisting families facing especially difficult circumstances, including those headed by single parents or children, those living in the most vulnerable and disadvantaged situations and those living in extreme poverty or caring for children with disabilities;

To strengthen efforts to implement programmes for realizing child rights in early childhood with equity, involving the support of international organizations and donor institutions and the private sector, through, inter alia, the development of specific early childhood programmes, and to further enhance the efforts of the international community to improve cooperation to assist developing countries in achieving all internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals;

To develop or enhance programmes to support parents, legal guardians and other caregivers in their child-rearing role through the development of health-care, education and social welfare services, including quality early childhood development programmes, prenatal and post-natal services and social safety programmes for disadvantaged groups;

To ensure that funding for comprehensive early childhood development programmes is considered during resource allocation in order to ensure their full implementation;

To provide training, as appropriate, with the aim that early childhood professionals and educators have sufficient skills and knowledge connected to responsive care and stimulation, proper nutrition and health, and that they are sufficiently remunerated and incentivized;

To develop, strengthen and implement national systems for collecting, monitoring and evaluating disaggregated national data on relevant aspects of early childhood development, including on neonatal, infant and under-five mortality rates;

Calls upon all Member States, and invites the United Nations system, to strengthen international cooperation to ensure the realization of the rights of the child, including in early childhood, inter alia, by supporting national initiatives that give more emphasis to early childhood development, as appropriate;

Calls upon the relevant entities, funds and programmes of the United Nations system, donor institutions, including the international financial institutions, and bilateral donors to support, inter alia, national initiatives, when requested, including early childhood development programmes, financially and technically, as well as to enhance effective international cooperation and partnership to strengthen knowledge-sharing and capacity-building for early childhood, in terms of policy development, programme development, research and professional training;

IV.Follow-up

Decides:

To request the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its sixty-sixth session a comprehensive report on the rights of the child containing information on the status of the Convention on the Rights of the ChildError: Reference source not found and the issues addressed in the present resolution, with a focus on the rights of children with disabilities;

To request the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict to continue to submit reports to the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council on the activities undertaken in the fulfilment of her mandate, including information on her field visits and on the progress achieved and the challenges remaining on the children and armed conflict agenda;

To request the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children to continue to submit annual reports to the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council on the activities undertaken in the fulfilment of her mandate;

To request the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography to continue to submit reports to the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council on the activities undertaken in the fulfilment of her mandate;

To invite the Chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child to present an oral report on the work of the Committee to the General Assembly at its sixty-sixth session as a way to enhance communication between the Assembly and the Committee;

To continue its consideration of the question at its sixty-sixth session under the item entitled “Promotion and protection of the rights of children”, focusing section III of the resolution entitled “Rights of the child” on the rights of children with disabilities.

Paragraph content is machine-extracted from UN documents. For authoritative content, please refer to the official UN document.