Children’s Views Highlight Gaps in U.S. Child Policy
The world recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As is often the case with international human rights events, Universal Children’s Day (November 20) received much more attention from policymakers and civil society in other countries. That’s regrettable, because millions of children in the United States face pressing needs. A new report by UNICEF finds that nearly one-third of US children live in poverty, leaving the U.S. ranked 36th out of 41 developed countries. “Between 2006 and 2001, child poverty increased in 34 states,” according to UNICEF. On a host of other measures, U.S. children do not fare as well as children in many other developed nations.
That the U.S. needs to make a greater commitment to ensuring the rights and well-being of all children is clear. A critical step is to reassess our strategy for securing child well-being. That process must include children and adolescents, not just because children’s rights law provides that every child has the right to participate in decisions that affect his or her life, but because children have important insights.
The ChildFund Alliance recently polled over 6,000 children from around the world, including children in the United States. Children’s responses to two questions are insightful:
First, children were asked: “Children have the right to protection from work that harms them and is bad for their health and education. How often, do you think, are children being protected from doing work that is harmful in your country?”
Far fewer U.S. children thought they had adequate protection: “Of children surveyed in developed countries, those from Ireland (85%), Sweden (84%) and Japan (81%) are most likely to report children in their country being protected always or often, in contrast with children from the USA (40%).”
Second, children were asked: “Children have the right to give their own opinion and for adults to take it seriously. How often, do you think, this is happening in your country?”
Far fewer U.S. children reported having an opportunity to participate and be heard: “Of children from developed countries, those surveyed in Sweden (50%), France (49%) and Korea (46%) are most likely to say that children are always or often heard and taken seriously, in contrast with those in USA (22%).”
These results highlight both the importance of listening to children generally and, more specifically, children’s insights into how the U.S. is doing. If the U.S. is to make meaningful progress on children’s rights and child poverty, policies and programs must be responsive to children’s needs and must include children’s perspectives in the development, implementation and evaluation of those policies and programs.