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	Violation of Children’s Rights Worldwide by Global Network for Rights and Development Norway   Thousands of children in the world face daily violations. Rarely a day goes by without a child being subjected to abuse and violations. What are the forms and motivations for child abuse and how does it manifest?   Violence against a child causes damage, pain and suffering to the child victim. A child’s sanctity can be perpetuated on an equal level by parents, guardians, close family friends, or strangers.   According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) articles (17), (19),(23),(25),(27),(29),(32) and (39)children can face:   Physical abuse: This can manifest itself in severe beatings and may expose a child to fractures and contusions, bruises, wounds, burns; involving them in physical activities and unethical practices.   This can also manifest in depriving the child from physical and psychological necessities such as food, clothing, adequate shelter and the necessary medical care, as well as subjecting the child to rape, torture and self-harm.   Psychological abuse: Includes authoritarianism, intimidation and exaggerated blame. According to CRC articles (13) (14), abuse includes depriving the child of the right to learn and to obtain knowledge. Abuse against children causes many difficulties in the development of the child, including isolation, depression, negatively affected socialization skills.   Recruitment or use of children in armed conflict   Millions of children are victims of conflict, because they are easy targets. Such victims suffer on many levels:   Children are generally vulnerable due to their age, lack of strength and lack of awareness. They are less likely to speak up as they are unlikely to know that physical abuse is wrong.   Malnutrition, diseases, disabilities, lack of shelter and poverty all contribute to the vulnerability of the child. Special measures for the protection of children from such severe and terrible abuse and the exploitation of their rights must be addressed.   Even though the provisions of international humanitarian and human rights laws are in place, including vital structures such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, children''''s rights are clearly still being violated. Child recruitment in conflict still occurs in many parts of the world.   Child labour   According to a 2013 report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) ‘Marking progress against child labour’, the number of child labourers worldwide is estimated to have fallen from around 264 million child labourers in 2000 to around 168 million children, yet this current figure still shockingly accounts for almost 11 per cent of the child population as a whole. More than half of them, around 85 million, are working in hazardous environments, endangering their health and safety or are suffering from slavery and other forms of forced labour; including drug trafficking and prostitution, as well as involvement in armed conflict.   Furthermore, according to the International Labour Organization’s report, in the Middle East and North Africa, there are nearly 9.2 million child workers (8.4 per cent of the global total), suffering from poverty, as well as a poor quality of education.   There are various possible reasons for this child labour phenomenon, which may be attributed to:   Poverty: This is the first factor which explains why child labour occurs in all parts of the world. Children are forced to leave school early and work instead to try to provide for the family.   Absence of schooling: Children do not go to school for different reasons such as:   The inability of the family to bear the costs of study for their child.   For many survival is the ultimate goal, and work is considered more necessary than education.   Therefore, reducing poverty and emphasising the importance of education is vital to reducing child labour.   Denial of education   The importance of education is well recognized internationally. Recent international experiences have shown that education is the first contributing factor to countries that have made great strides in progress. Many children are however still deprived of their right to education.   As a 2013 UNESCO paper indicates, half of the 57 million children worldwide who are not enrolled in school are living in conflict-affected countries. UNESCO expresses the need for the world to take urgent action to bring education to the 28.5 million children worldwide who are being deprived of it in conflict zones.   Deprivation of play   It is commonly accepted that children who are deprived of playful activities are unable to exercise their full right to childhood. As Peter Gray, psychologist and research professor, maintains “Play deprivation is bad for children. Among other things, it promotes anxiety, depression, suicide, narcissism, and loss of creativity”. GNRD believes playing is important in contributing to the development of the child and to support both mental and physical health.   Thus, GNRD has launched the “I Have a Right to Play” project which aims to give “vulnerable children that are living in poor social and economic conditions the authentic opportunity to enjoy their right to play in a safe and adequate environment and encourage them to develop their talents.” GNRD plans to expand this project to all countries that are in need to enforce children’s rights worldwide.   Abuse and its impact on child   There is no doubt that violations have very negative effects on the child and may cause frustration, self-contempt and a lack of a sense of belonging, as well as increasing reliance on others. Studies and analyses, such as those conducted by the Child Welfare Information Gateway, indicate that there are long-term physical, psychological, behavioral, and societal consequences of child abuse and that abused children are significantly more likely to live in fear and to avoid social interaction.   Child abuse over the long term may lead to a lack of physical activity, poor mental and emotional health, problems with speech, language and interpersonal skills, as well as learning difficulties and behavioral problems such as stealing, violence, loss of control and future abuse of others.   Thus, GNRD believes that laws and regulations must be applied and sanctions must be tightened in order reduce offences and crimes in order to help prevent child abuse.   In addition, it is important for states to ensure they ensure they actively comply with international standards on child labour laws and ensure they provide good care for all children, as well as raising awareness on the topic in order to support the global effort to eradicate child abuse.   Promote children''s rights through hearing individual complaints in the United Nations   The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by 194 countries, is the fundamental international human rights instrument aimed at protecting and ensuring the rights of children, according to their best interests. International compliance with this Convention is monitored by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which is composed of members from countries around the world.   Other international instruments that defend and support children include the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.   In the case of government endorsement, the Optional Protocol on the provision of complaints ensures that the UN Commission on Human Rights will issue specific recommendations to be implemented by the state in cases of child abuse.   The Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD) confirms that the abuse of children and causing their suffering is a violation of international law and cannot be tolerated.   We urgently calls on the international community to take all necessary measures to prevent violations against and abuse of the child. 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	How The Rich Rule US Democracy by Dani Rodrik Project Syndicate, agencies   It is hardly news that the rich have more political power than the poor, even in democratic countries where everyone gets a single vote in elections.   But two political scientists, Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, have recently produced some stark findings for the United States that have dramatic implications for the functioning of democracy – in the US and elsewhere.   The authors’ research builds on prior work by Gilens, who painstakingly collected public-opinion polls on nearly 2,000 policy questions from 1981 to 2002. The pair then examined whether America’s federal government adopted the policy in question within four years of the survey, and tracked how closely the outcome matched the preferences of voters at different points of the income distribution.   When viewed in isolation, the preferences of the “average” voter – that is, a voter in the middle of the income distribution – seem to have a strongly positive influence on the government’s ultimate response. A policy that the average voter would like is significantly more likely to be enacted.   But, as Gilens and Page note, this gives a misleadingly upbeat impression of the representativeness of government decisions. The preferences of the average voter and of economic elites are not very different on most policy matters. For example, both groups of voters would like to see a strong national defense and a healthy economy. A better test would be to examine what the government does when the two groups have divergent views.   To carry out that test, Gilens and Page ran a horse race between the preferences of average voters and those of economic elites – defined as individuals at the top tenth percentile of the income distribution – to see which voters exert greater influence. They found that the effect of the average voter drops to insignificant levels, while that of economic elites remains substantial.   The implication is clear: when the elites’ interests differ from those of the rest of society, it is their views that count – almost exclusively. (As Gilens and Page explain, we should think of the preferences of the top 10% as a proxy for the views of the truly wealthy, say, the top 1% – the genuine elite.)   Gilens and Page report similar results for organized interest groups, which wield a powerful influence on policy formation. As they point out, “it makes very little difference what the general public thinks” once interest-group alignments and the preferences of affluent Americans are taken into account.   These disheartening results raise an important question: How do politicians who are unresponsive to the interests of the vast majority of their constituents get elected and, more important, re-elected, while doing the bidding mostly of the wealthiest individuals?   Part of the explanation may be that most voters have a poor understanding of how the political system works and how it is tilted in favor of the economic elite. As Gilens and Page emphasize, their evidence does not imply that government policy makes the average citizen worse off. Ordinary citizens often do get what they want, by virtue of the fact that their preferences frequently are similar to those of the elite. This correlation of the two groups’ preferences may make it difficult for voters to discern politicians’ bias.   But another, more pernicious, part of the answer may lie in the strategies to which political leaders resort in order to get elected. A politician who represents the interests primarily of economic elites has to find other means of appealing to the masses. Such an alternative is provided by the politics of nationalism, sectarianism, and identity – a politics based on cultural values and symbolism rather than bread-and-butter interests. When politics is waged on these grounds, elections are won by those who are most successful at “priming” our latent cultural and psychological markers, not those who best represent our interests.   Karl Marx famously said that religion is “the opium of the people.” What he meant is that religious sentiment could obscure the material deprivations that workers and other exploited people experience in their daily lives.   In much of the same way, the rise of the religious right and, with it, culture wars over “family values” and other highly polarizing issues (for example, immigration) have served to insulate American politics from the sharp rise in economic inequality since the late 1970s. As a result, conservatives have been able to retain power despite their pursuit of economic and social policies that are inimical to the interests of the middle and lower classes.   Identity politics is malignant because it tends to draw boundaries around a privileged in-group and requires the exclusion of outsiders – those of other countries, values, religions, or ethnicities. This can be seen most clearly in illiberal democracies such as Russia, Turkey, and Hungary. In order to solidify their electoral base, leaders in these countries appeal heavily to national, cultural, and religious symbols.   In doing so, they typically inflame passions against religious and ethnic minorities. For regimes that represent economic elites (and are often corrupt to the core), it is a ploy that pays off handsomely at the polls.   Widening inequality in the world’s advanced and developing countries thus inflicts two blows against democratic politics. Not only does it lead to greater disenfranchisement of the middle and lower classes; it also fosters among the elite a poisonous politics of sectarianism.   * Dani Rodrik is Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.   http://www.social-europe.eu/2014/09/us-democracy-2/ http://www.social-europe.eu/2014/10/vulnerability/ http://ourfuture.org/20141015/new-study-finds-big-government-makes-people-happy-free-markets-dont http://www.rightingfinance.org/?p=1011 Visit the related web page
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