{"id":4406,"date":"2022-04-11T18:40:05","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T10:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crcasia.org\/?page_id=4406"},"modified":"2024-08-08T13:47:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T05:47:00","slug":"childrights-and-the-sdgs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crcasia.org\/childrights-and-the-sdgs\/","title":{"rendered":"Children’s Rights and the SDGs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals adopted in 2015, provide an international framework and call to action toward a more equitable, peaceful, resilient, and prosperous societies in 2030. While there are arguments over the value of the SDGs, they undeniably are an essential means of delivering some human rights commitments. They offer a more comprehensive package of actions compared to their predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals. One example of this is the apparent inclusion of ‘sustainable development\u2019 and the interest of humanity and the planet into a wide array of goals, targets, and indicators.<\/p>\n

A few years from now, countries are scheduled to answer to their commitments to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The trajectory of the SDGs has been disrupted by a global pandemic, making the achievement of the Goals much more challenging, with countries either recovering or continually grappling with the multidimensional impact of COVID-19. The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2020 prepared by the UN Economic and Social Affairs in collaboration with international agencies and individual experts shows an insufficient progress and looks at some of the effects of COVID-19 on specific goals and targets. What is clear, is that the pandemic laid bare and exacerbated existing deep social and economic inequalities. This public health, economic, and social crisis continues to hit harder the most vulnerable groups such as the older people, persons with disabilities, indigenous people, migrants and refugees, those working in the informal sector, women, and children.<\/p>\n

In addition, this unprecedented crisis also strengthened the case for raising the alarm on the climate emergency, with children leading other children in the clamor against government inaction against the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

Despite the huge fear of the anticipated regressive impact of the pandemic, governments and civil society are still envisioning and working towards building a better post-COVID world. The pandemic presents an opportunity to shift priorities and ways of working, for instance, to improve health, economic, and social protection systems. Most importantly, with a view to building back better from the impacts of the pandemic, the Voluntary National Review (VNR) on the progress towards the implementation of the SDGs also presents an opportunity to tackle crucial aspects of national development such as financing for inclusive recovery for children.<\/p>\n

In principle, the VNR aims to facilitate the sharing of experiences, including successes, challenges, and lessons learned, with a view to accelerating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. The VNR also seeks to strengthen policies and institutions of governments and to mobilize multi-stakeholder support and partnerships for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. These processes also present civil society with several entry points of engagement with governments and other key actors and opportunities to amplify advocacy messages.<\/p>\n

The SDGs and Children\u2019s Rights<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Child rights advocates have been recognizing the need to mainstream children\u2019s rights into the broader development and human rights mechanisms and discourse. Children\u2019s rights should not be viewed in isolation as it cuts across other human rights. Looking at children\u2019s rights in this manner is beneficial in strengthening the child rights movement, especially during these times when civic spaces are shrinking, human rights are being increasingly violated, and political contexts are changing.\u00a0Beyond the narrow focus on \u2018children\u2019s issues,\u2019 children\u2019s rights are interlinked with other global platforms and opportunities relevant to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC) such as discussions on The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the SDGs,\u00a0among others. As such is the framework of the 43rd session of the Human Rights Council<\/a> in 2020. In commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Convention, the Council held its annual High-level panel<\/a><\/u> on human rights mainstreaming, focusing in particular on children\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n

In addition, UNICEF has done extensive work on mapping the Global Goals and the Articles in the UN CRC presenting the links between all the 17 Goals and the UN CRC in the areas of health, education, and violence. Also, in July 2019, it updated its report on Progress for Every Child in the SDG Era<\/a><\/em>, assessing the performance of countries on the 44 child-related SDG indicators arranged into five dimensions of children\u2019s rights: the rights to survive and thrive, to learn, to be protected from violence, to live in a safe and clean environment, and to have an equal opportunity to succeed. The report cites that data availability and progress across these five dimensions vary. The lack of timely, open, reliable, quality, and disaggregated data remains a major challenge in measuring the true progress of the SDG indicators.<\/p>\n

This Webpage<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In light of a renewed perspective towards the development during and after the pandemic, Child Rights Coalition Asia has put together this webpage as an online repository of resources on children\u2019s rights and the Sustainable Development Goals. This effort is part of the Coalition\u2019s overall objective to strengthen civil society movements by mainstreaming children\u2019s rights into other development and human rights framework and processes.<\/p>\n

If you have relevant resources that can be added to this resource page, please email them to us at secretariat@crcasia.org.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>