A centenary provides a moment to reflect
Ann Skelton
Ann Marie Skelton (born 13 July 1961) is a South African jurist and children’s rights activist who has been chairperson of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child since May 2023. She is a professor of private law at the University of Pretoria, where she is UNESCO Chair in Education Law in Africa, and she also holds the Chair in Children’s Rights in a Sustainable World at Leiden University.
An expert on child law, Skelton rose to prominence as a practicing human rights lawyer and advocate, first in non-profit organisations and then through the strategic litigation programme of the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Child Law, which was formerly headed by Skelton. In addition, through the South African Law Reform Commission, she has played a significant role in post-apartheid child law reform in South Africa, including as chair of the committee that drafted the Child Justice Act of 2008.
A centenary provides a moment to reflect – and this book presents us with a series of thoughts and ideas as we look back over a hundred years, contemplate the current situation, and gaze into the future of children’s rights. The hundredth anniversary of the Geneva Declaration on the Rights of the Child causes us to remember the work of the English pioneer Eglantyne Jebb, who is mentioned in several chapters, and that of Janusz Korczak, another important thought leader on children’s rights, who died along with two hundred children in the Treblinka camp in 1942, only 18 years after the Declaration.
The stark reality of millions of children starving to death drove Eglantyne Jebb to find solutions for children impacted by war. Eglantyne and her sister Dorothy Buxton worked to shift public sympathy towards the enemy’s children, ensuring that they too were spared from starvation. Regrettably, the sisters’ mission remains unfulfilled. Children are again suffering the impacts of war; again, millions of them are facing malnutrition. There are 473 million children worldwide living in armed conflict zones, according to Save the Children’s research[1]. The six grave violations of children’s rights in war, monitored by the United Nations Security Council, have reached extreme levels in recent years. According to the Report of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict issued in 2024, killing and maiming, followed by recruitment and use of children, the denial of humanitarian access, and abduction topped the list of verified violations in 2023[2]. The report recorded that children were “killed and maimed in unprecedented numbers in devastating crises in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, notably in the Gaza Strip, in Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Somalia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic and Ukraine, among many other situations”[3].
The Committee on the Rights of the Child has called for ceasefires, for a return to the basics of humanitarian law, and for thorough, impartial investigations of all the grave violations against children in the context of armed conflict[4]. Eglantyne Jebb and Janusz Korczak would expect nothing less from those of us who walk in their footsteps and whose task is to ensure the implementation of the successor to the 1924 Declaration – the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant of arrest for the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation for her part in the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation. This is a stark reminder to us all of just how crucial the independence of international children’s rights institutions really is. It is a core value that must be upheld – operating through the appointment processes and featuring in every aspect of the work. Some of the chapters in this book remind us of the important work of these institutions. Other chapters reflect on the value of incorporating the Convention. It is refreshing to read about the incorporation journey in Scotland at a time of increased pushback against children’s rights. Children’s participation is another important element highlighted by some of the chapters in the book. To understand the way in which children themselves experience their rights and to be able to translate this into positive change at the country level, we need to hear from those who are closest to the ground. After all, the real work of international children’s rights is done at the local level.
Footnotes
[1] Thea Charlotte Andersen, Gunvor Fulkes Knag, and Ewa Sapiezynska, Stop the War on Children – Pathways to Peace (Save the Children, 2024), https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/document/stop-the-war-on-children-pathways-to-peace/.
[2] UN Secretary-General, Children and Armed Conflict: Rep. of the Secretary-General, UN doc. A/78/842-S/2024/384 (3 June 2024).
[3] A/78/842-S/2024/384, ¶ 4.
[4] Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “End the Killing of Children in Armed Conflict, UN Committee Urges,” UN press release, 20 November 2023, https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2023/11/end-killing-children-armed-conflict-un-committee-urges.