The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

Abstract

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the latest of the major UN treaties on human rights. The text contains a mix of general human rights and humanitarian law principles which are adapted to the special circumstances of children such as freedom of expression, freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, and the right to education, and new rights including as those relating to fostering and adoption and rights to protection from sexual and other exploitation. The CRC is the only general UN human rights treaty to devote a specific article to indigenous rights, coupling them with rights of minorities in what is essentially a development of Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 30 of the CRC provides: In those States in which ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities or persons of indigenous origin exist, a child belonging to such a minority or who is indigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practise his or her own religion, or to use his or her own language.