Children’s wellbeing, rights and safety are treated like secondary issues next to the pressing challenges of our time, but what if child protection were also to be recognized as a complete human rights matter?
A lot of things in the public sphere are for children: campaigns, giving away goods, painting children’s faces at festivals, and trying to teach them about their rights, especially those of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Countless panels are organised by children’s rights organisations, and social media overflows with statements about how children and their rights are important. But that doesn’t seem to be quite true.
Children’s rights somehow aren’t as big of a word and concept as human rights, even though children, as humans, are a part of them. When we hear about harm done to children, they are often framed as the little ones, first and foremost the responsibility of their parents, but somehow not full humans in the same sense adults are. When, however, we hear of human rights violations, it’s a crisis, a major problem, and on the agenda of every news outlet; Yet when human rights violations affect children, they rarely receive that level of recognition and urgency.
In German there’s a saying: children aren’t small adults. Although meant to highlight little issues of reason, like how having ice cream for dinner isn’t a reasonable choice, the common usage of sayings like this and their application to all kinds of different situations normalises the dismissal of children’s opinions and experiences. It subtly reinforces the idea that their voices matter less, their experiences are exaggerated and their opinions unreasonable.
More and more people now openly express a dislike for children, speaking of them much as they would of animals or everyday nuances. As this attitude becomes normalised, it reinforces the idea that children are unnecessary, burdensome, or inherently disruptive. This growing normalisation of contempt diminishes children’s perceived value as human beings and undermines recognition of their need, just like everyone else, for acceptance, respect, community and overall wellbeing.
The amnesia of adulthood
Every adult used to be a child and has had a childhood, a time where we all knew less, depended more on others, and, in the cases of a bad childhood, felt the absolute helplessness and despair it comes with. But as adults, we develop a kind of amnesia. We disconnect from our own vulnerability and begin to treat children as a separate group, unrelated to our past or shared human experience.
Many people in the world have children, most have children in the family, and everyone without exception used to be a child. And somehow, children are an exempt category, a side aspect of human rights, often not taken seriously, not seen, not talked about, and not recognised in their personhood or their struggles.
Child protection is a collective responsibility
While children may not be adults, they’re full humans, and every harm done to them is a violation of human rights, a serious matter, and something that concerns all of us, whether we want children in the future or not. It is easy to say that “children are our future,” but while this slogan seems to understand the importance of children’s role as the future’s adults, it seems to be an optimistic and hopeful saying without the recognition that when we don’t grant children’s wellbeing today, the future also won’t be very promising, no matter how much we brand ourselves to think that way.
Child protection and bringing awareness to issues like corporal punishment, neglect, and sexual abuse are everyone’s business. Children, like almost no other group of humans in the world, depend on other people, on help from outside, and on others taking responsibility and action for their safety and wellbeing. Protecting children doesn’t mean that every single adult has to become a children’s rights champion, but simply acknowledging that children, too, are our fellow man and woman, or in this case, boy and girl.
Ultimately, how a society treats its children reflects how it values humanity as a whole. When children’s rights are minimised, when harm to them is tolerated or ignored, a culture of silence and inequality grows. When we defend children’s rights with the same seriousness we give to the grand name of human rights, we affirm that dignity and protection do not depend on size, age, or power.
Child protection was never just a matter for families or experts. It is, and always has been, a public responsibility. Children may be small, but the moral and collective obligation toward them is not.
