Strengthening children's rights, listening to them and being free from violence is the basis of the "Declaration of the Rights of the Child" adopted by the UN General Assembly on 20 November 1959. The day 30 years later, 20 November 1989, was followed by the "Convention on the Rights of the Child".
It is in the interests of society as a whole that this generation should grow up without violence and without discrimination. But it is also important to support regions with worse conditions, to improve living conditions and to offer perspectives to refugee children.
In order to fill the Convention on the Rights of the Child with life and to help the children to their rights, the IB supports the initiative "Children's Rights in the Constitution". The current German government had included this as a project in the coalition agreement. A constitutional regulation could, among others, guarantee the primacy of children's welfare and demand the right to development, participation and support. Above all, the latter would make the work of our many teachers much easier. Even today, education is part of the basic programme for the youngest in the IB's facilities. As lobbyists for children, we could demand their right to education even more clearly with a claim formulated in constitutional law.
Even if there can be no all-round legal protection for children: The more conscious all people are that they have their own rights, the more closely they all look at whether they are being observed. A civil society that already respects the rights of its smallest fellow citizens is a sustainable society. That is in all our interests. The children of today are the adults of tomorrow. And one day they will treat their children the way they have been treated. That is why we have a duty to take children seriously and to grant them all the rights we claim for ourselves!
