ABSTRACT
On 20 November 1989 the General Assembly of the United Nations unanimously endorsed the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Signed by a record sixty-one countries on the day of its opening for signature on 26 January 1990, it stood at the close of the century as one of the most widely ratified human rights treaties in the history of the United Nations. It remains at the onset of the millennium as a benchmark for global initiatives in the arena of children’s rights. Among its key achievements is the recognition that it affords children, for the first time, that they should enjoy the same comprehensive range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights as are currently possessed by adults. It also strengthens its agenda with a call to state parties to assume a position of legal and moral responsibility and accountability in order to offer the administrative, legislative, judicial and other means necessary to advance the Convention’s detailed and comprehensive charter for the future.
