CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER 7CHILDREN’S HUMAN RIGHTS

7.1 The Rights of Children

7.1.1 Background to Children’s Rights
7.2 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
7.2.1 General Principles of the CRC
7.2.2 Survival and Development of the Child
7.2.3 Best Interests of the Child
7.2.4 Non-Discrimination
7.2.5 Right to Participate
7.3 Protection of Children against Violence
7.3.1 Children and Domestic Violence
7.3.2 Children and Violence at School
7.3.3 Children and Sexual Abuse
7.4 The Right to Education
7.4.1 Elements of the Right to Education
7.4.2 Availability and Accessibility of Education in
Southeast Asia
7.4.3 Acceptable and Adaptable Education
7.5 Juvenile Justice
7.5.1 Laws of Juvenile Justice
7.5.2 Juvenile Courts and Detention Centers
7.6 Children and Labour
7.7 Children in Armed Conflict
7.7.1 Protection of Children from Armed Conflict under
International Law
7.8 Right of Adolescents to Reproductive Health
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CHILDREN’S HUMAN RIGHTS

7.1 The Rights of Children

While parents may always love their children, opinions on how they
should be protected, what rights they should have, and what type of work they
can do, change according to how society views children and childhood.
Centuries ago, some children could be forced into hard labour, face criminal
charges as adults, and were often married as adults. Throughout Southeast
Asia, it was common for children to labour in the fields from as young as five,
while European children of the same age worked in mines and factories. There
was no minimum age for marriage, and many girls forced to marry adult men
commonly gave birth at the age of fourteen or fifteen. A child committing a
crime could be found guilty, jailed, or even executed. Why were children
treated this way? Not because society disliked them, but because they were
seen as adults, and treated as adults. It was not until the seventeenth century
that, in a sense, the idea of childhood was invented and children were seen as
different to adults, and they should be treated differently.
This chapter will detail the key elements of children’s rights by examining their
history before reviewing how these are dealt with in the CRC. The remainder
of the chapter will explore important areas of protection such as violence
against children, rights to education, juvenile justice, child labour, child
soldiers, and child reproductive health.

7.1.1 Background to Children’s Rights

In the 1800s, a few industrial European countries began to recognize
some children’s rights, for example, by passing labour laws to protect children
(1833 in England, and 1841 in France). At the same time, laws on compulsory
education were introduced first in Prussia in 1764, and much later in England
in 1870, with other European countries sometime in-between. The international
instruments on children’s rights evolved from mere statements of recognition
of the rights of the child as can be seen in the League of Nations’ Geneva
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Declaration of the Rights of Children (1924), to legally binding documents in

the form of the CRC. The English woman, Eglantyne Jebb, who was involved
in drafting the Declaration on the Rights of the Child, also established Save the
Children in 1919 as the first humanitarian organization dedicated exclusively to
children, and now one of the largest humanitarian organizations in the world.
Alongside these developments came changes to laws relating to children in
court and the introduction of juvenile justice systems (around the early 1900s)
when many European nations outlawed corporal punishment for children.
These changes were only to reach Southeast Asia in the twentieth century
(mostly after 1945) during early periods of independence. At the same time,
labour laws began changing in the 1950s, although the process would not be
complete until the 1990s. Compulsory education followed in the 1960s, but
some countries did not develop juvenile justice systems until after 2000.
All these changes reflect changing social attitudes to children. Once seen
as small adults, children were treated exactly the same in work and law until
the 1700s when childhood was seen as a different and special period of life,
one in which children were more vulnerable and would need support to learn
and develop into responsible adults. Many reasons are given for these changing
attitudes including lower childhood mortality rates due to improvements in
healthcare and the invention of the vaccinations which resulted in smaller
families. Another is mechanization in the industrial revolution which meant
child labour was no longer as necessary in farms and factories. Alongside these
changes, strong advocates worked tirelessly for the better treatment of children
so that by the 1920s most children in wealthy countries had been removed from
factories and battlefields and were relatively free of severe health concerns. In
addition, welfare systems developed, particularly for orphans and single
mothers – although the treatment they received would be deemed harsh today,
such systems did recognize that children needed extra protection and care.
As demonstrated by the size of the Geneva Declaration which lists only
five rights and takes up less than half a page, children’s rights in this period
were limited. The result is that by the time universal human rights are
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recognized in the UDHR, only a small number of children’s rights exist. The
UDHR itself only gives one right: Art. 25 (on livelihood). Applying directly to
children (and motherhood), this stated that both were “entitled to special care
and assistance.” As will be discussed in the next section, these early rights
focused almost exclusively on children as subjects of welfare who needed to be
fed or protected from exploitation. Under the CRC, children’s rights were
expanded to recognize children as holders of rights, and not just recipients of
assistance.

compulsory education - မသင်မနေရပညာနရး

League of Nations’ Geneva Declaration of the Rights of Children (1924) -

နိုင်ငံနပါင်းချုပ်အသင်းကြီး၏ြနေးသူငယ်အခွင့်အနရးဆိုင်ရာန ြငငာချြ်

humanitarian organizations - ေူသားချင်းစာောနသာအဖွဲ ့

အစည်းများ

exploitation - အသုးံ ချအငမတ်ထုတ်ငခင်း

7.2 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

The CRC entered into force in 1990 and is now the most widely ratified
human rights treaty in history. International laws in existence before the CRC
included the 1924 Geneva Declaration and the ILO labour laws from 1919. In
addition, a Declaration on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the UN in
1959, and 1979 was declared the Year of the Child. With numerous
governments supporting the idea of children’s rights, and coordinated efforts
from UNICEF and WHO, the CRC was rapidly drafted and adopted, coming
into force in 1990. The rapidity with which it became international law shows
the universal acceptance of children’s rights at this time. For most treaties, the
period from drafting to enforcement can last as long as 30 years (like the
ICCPR, ICESCR, and ICMW) but for CRC, the entire process took less than
ten.
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Coming at a revolutionary time, the CRC is an important treaty because

it marked a change in human rights. With the breaking up of the Soviet Union
and the end of the Cold War, the world was rapidly changing. This led to a
fundamental restructuring of human rights as seen in the new understanding
and approach brought about by the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action
in 1993. What sets the CRC apart is that it treats human rights as indivisible so
that civil and political rights are alongside economic and social rights.
Significantly, the convention incorporated participation as a right. Another
major difference to previous treaties is that it moves away from a legalistic
approach of defining rights and violations to a more rights-based approach. The
CRC sees human rights as a method to address and ultimately solve problems
using the ‘best interests of the child’ as a guiding principle.
The CRC brought together rights found in existing treaties like the
UDHR, ICESCR, and ICCPR but it also introduced some new ones, such as
protection from various abuses, rights to protection in conflict, and rights
during adoption. The CRC is slightly different from other treaties in that it
placed rights among three parties:
1. States, who have duties and obligations to meet children’s rights;
2. Children who are the right holders; and
3. Parents who have various duties towards their children, for example, to
provide protection and access to education and healthcare, but who are also
rights holders, for example, the right to influence a child’s religion and
education, rights to services like childcare, and to protection from having their
children removed.

There are three optional protocols to the CRC. Two were introduced on
the same day (25 May 2000) to address child soldiers (the Optional Protocol to
the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in
armed conflict, OP-CRC-AC) and the sexual exploitation of children (the
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of
children, child prostitution and child pornography, OP-CRC-SC). A third
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optional protocol which allows the CRC treaty body to accept individual
complaints entered into force in April 2014.
At the regional level, the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and
Protection of the Rights of Women and Children (ACWC) was established in
April 2010. Like AICHR, it is an intergovernmental commission consisting of
two representatives from each ASEAN State. The ACWC does not have a
protection mandate, so it does not take, or address complaints from individuals.
Rather, its work is focused on the promotion and protection of the rights of
women and children, aiming to develop cooperation, policies, and activities in
pursuit of these goals.

a legalistic approach - ဥပနေနရးရာရှု ့နထာင့်

child soldiers - ြနေးစစ်သားများ

sexual exploitation of children -ြနေးသူငယ်များအနပါ်

ေိင်ပိုင်ဆိုင်ရာအငမတ်ထုတ်မှု

child prostitution - ြနေးသူငယ်များြိုေိင်နြျး

ြျွေ်အငဖစ်အသုံးငပုငခင်း

child pornography - ြနေးသူငယ်များြိုညစ်ညမ်း

ပုံများတွင်အသုးံ ချငခင်း

ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women

and Children (ACWC) - အာဆီယံအမျိုးသမီးနှင့်ြနေး

သူငယ်အခွင့်နရးဆိုင်ရာနြာ်မရှင်

7.2.1 General Principles of the CRC

The CRC is guided by four overarching principles set out in General
Comment No. 12 (2009). The principles in themselves are not new, as they did
exist before the CRC. However, they are intended to strengthen both the
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understanding of children’s rights, and to influence how children’s rights are

protected by State and families. These principles will now be investigated.

7.2.2 Survival and Development of the Child

In societies around the world, ensuring the survival of children is always
given high priority. If there is a famine, organizations will work to feed
children first; if a boat is sinking, women and children will be called to board
the lifeboats first. While these principles are widely held, in practice this does
not always occur. As late as 100 years ago, a sizeable proportion of the
population still died as children (child mortality rates were as high as 30%),
and even if children survived their first five years of life, they would likely still
face hunger, conscription to the military, or harsh labour.
As a result, the first principle directed States to ensure a child’s survival
by reducing child mortality, protecting children from violence, and investing in
healthcare. Because the State is responsible for a child’s right to life, the CRC
insists that these concerns should take priority over other government affairs.
Governments reducing spending on maternal health, only to increase spending
on the military, would clearly be in violation of this principle. This principle is
particularly important in cultures where a preference for boys often results in
the termination of female foetuses, or where girls are not given the same rights
as boys. The same principle also ensured that children cannot face the death
penalty, while giving them special protection in areas of armed conflict.
Included in this principle is the right to development, because
obligations go beyond merely keeping a child alive; they also require children
are able to develop into healthy, educated adults. The right to development
covers rights to health which enables children to grow into healthy adults, the
right to education which teaches children how to be responsible adults, and
freedom of expression which develops a child’s knowledge. Development is
challenging for Southeast Asian governments as it requires them to devote
precious government resources to the health and education of children. As later
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sections of this chapter will show, as regards the education of children, there is
still much room for improvement in this region.
survival of children - ြနေးသူငယ်အသြ်ရှင်ရပ်တည်ခွင့်

hunger - ငတ်မွတ်နခါင်းပါးမှု

conscription to the military - စစ်မှုထမ်းရေ်နပါ်တာဆွဲငခင်း

harsh labour - အေုပ် ြမ်းေုပ်ရေ်ဆင့်နခါ်ငခင်း

7.2.3 Best Interests of the Child

The principle of the best interests of the child is novel. While not
actually defined, it means that decisions concerning a child should give the
child’s interests priority over other interests like the parents, the government,
the culture, the economy, and so on. What is a ‘best interest’ of the child is not
defined, though obviously things like their rights, their survival and
development would be important. The flexibility around ‘best interests’ can be
beneficial as it allows this principle to operate in a variety of settings, whether
they are court rooms, schools, hospitals, or in the family. This principle was in
use before the CRC, as it appeared in many State laws, particularly in family
law, adoption and custody judgments. In international human rights law, the
principle is mentioned in the 1959 Declaration on the Rights of the Child, and
in CEDAW (Arts 5 and 16). In the CRC, best interests are mentioned in
relation to separating children from parents, parental responsibility, adoption,
and court hearings.
This principle requires that decisions about children should prioritize the
child’s interests above all others. For example, when deciding if a child should
be separated from its parents, the fact the parents are violent and abusive must
take priority over the parent’s rights to look after their child, and the
government’s economic interest in avoiding paying for the child’s relocation.
best interest’ of the child - ြနေးသူငယ်တို ့ဘဝတတ်နင
ို ်သမျှနြာင်းစားနရး

child’s relocation - ြနေးသူငယ်များြိုနေရာနရွ နငပာင်

့ းနပးငခင်း
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7.2.4 Non-Discrimination
All human rights treaties give prominence to non-discrimination and the
CRC is no different. This principle does not cover discrimination against
children as a group (for example, treating children differently from adults), but
discrimination against specific groups of children. Some groups of children
face constant discrimination. For instance, girls in many countries have less
rights than boys. They are forced to leave school earlier, or do not receive the
same education as their brothers. This situation is seen more in East and South
Asia, where there is a saying, “sending your daughter to school is like watering
your neighbour’s garden,” or in other words, doing something to benefit others
and not yourself. Disabled children also face discrimination. Across the region,
they rarely get the same access to education while governments offer little
support to their parents, and they are made fun of in the community. Other
groups facing discrimination may also include ethnic minority children, the
children of migrant workers, and child migrants.
Disabled children - မသေ်စွမ်းြနေးငယ်များ

ethnic minority children - တိုင်းရင်းသားမျိုးနွယ်စုမှ ြနေးများ

the children of migrant workers - နရွ နငပာင်

့ းေုပ်သားများ၏ြနေးများ

child migrants - ြနေးနရွ နငပာင်

့ းသူများ

7.2.5 Right to Participate

Participation is a widely recognized human right and commonly
associated with rights to development. Although not directly mentioned in
treaties before the CRC, rights to participate in politics and freedom of
expression are rights to participation. Strictly speaking, there is only one use of
the word ‘participation’ in the CRC in relation to children with a disability
being able to participate in the community, so it is not about all children. The
general principle is about the views of the child being taken seriously, as found
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in Art. 12, which essentially means the right to participation. By being included
as a general principle, it may be argued that the right to participation put
children’s rights on a higher level. So according to this new standard, children
should firstly be seen as active subjects in the process, meaning that they
should have a say in how their rights are met. The aim is to get away from the
so-called ‘charity’ approach where, as passive recipients of charity, responding
to the needs of children is entirely decided by the charity givers. Viewing
children as rights holders who are able to contribute to decisions about them,
fits into the ‘rights-based’ approach. A second objective of participation is to
ensure children have a say in how their rights are delivered. This is particularly
important as regards rights to religion, education, and media.
A child’s right to participate in decisions concerning them has been
noted in many areas including adoption, education, judicial decisions, custody,
development, and policies relating to children. For example, courts should hear
the views of children alongside their parents in a custody case. The
participation of the child is weighted according to the age and maturity of the
child. An example of this is allowing children to participate in decision about
education. All high school systems in the region let students elect subjects to
study in addition to various compulsory courses. Five year olds, on the other
hand, would not be given a choice because they lack maturity and knowledge
to decide their education. As the term ‘best interests’ is not defined, neither are
‘maturity’ and ‘age.’ Instead, it is usually left up to governments and parents to
make the final decision, taking into account the child’s views.
The principle of participation clashes with more traditional and
patriarchal social views which assume that parents, or in some cases, only the
father, should have final say on their children’s lives. The right for children to
choose their own religion and to have access to their own media is not widely
accepted in some communities. It is mainly for this reason that rights to
participation are poorly institutionalized in Southeast Asia. Most legal systems
recognize the right of children to participate in decisions concerning them, but
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this may not actually occur in courts. Likewise, children are given few
opportunities to provide input in their education.
These four general principles are important throughout the convention,
as they influence the way children’s rights are met while also providing
solutions to some problems facing children. The rest of this chapter will
examine five areas where children need special services, or are vulnerable to
exploitation and threats: protection from violence, education, work, armed
conflict, and reproductive health.
the right to participation - ပါဝင်နဆာင်ရွြ်နိုင်ခွင့်

reproductive health - မျိုးဆြ်ပွားြျေ်းမာနရး

7.3 Protection of Children against Violence

Protecting children from violence is one of the most important duties of
both State and family. In fact, it has been argued that the institutions which
should protect them (the family and the State) are frequently complicit in this
violence. As stated in Art. 19 of the CRC, every child has a right to protection
from abuse, neglect, violence, and exploitation:
States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social
and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or
mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment
or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parents, legal
guardians or any other person who has care of the child. Art. 19.1
Importantly, this article defines violence as physical or mental, injury,
abuse, neglect and so on. The definition was further expanded in the CRC’s
General Comment No 13 (2011) on Art. 19. The full definition includes other
forms of violence such as corporal punishment, forced marriages, and initiation
rites. Art. 19 noted that to prevent violence, governments should ensure
appropriate educational programmes, laws, and government agencies are in
place. It also recognizes that although caregivers should protect children from
violence, they can also be the perpetrators of it. As such, the General Comment
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emphasized the importance of these duties and obligations because the “extent
and intensity of violence exerted on children is alarming” and that “no violence
against children is justifiable; all violence against children is preventable.”
Further, it demanded States provide proper forms of prevention, investigation,
and follow-up of instances of child maltreatment or exploitation.
A UN study which starts in 2002 and is published as the Secretary
General’s Study on Violence Against Children (2006) is important because it
recognized violence against children as a mostly hidden global phenomenon,
but whose impacts are serious. In most Southeast Asian societies children face
violence everywhere: from parents and teachers disciplining naughty children
to violence in detention, orphanages, and the workplace. Communities often
ignore such violence, accepting it as a parent’s right or acceptable cultural
practice. Many societies even see the hitting of children as good parenting. For
example, the saying “spare the rod and spoil the child,” although originally
adapted from a biblical proverb, has equivalent phrases in the region. As such,
no laws exist against parents hitting their children although they do in many
other countries. For instance, Sweden was one of the first countries to ban
domestic corporal punishment. Similarly, teachers are still permitted to hit
children in most Southeast Asian countries, as are employers, although striking
an adult in the workplace is a criminal offence. Children or teenagers being hit
or slapped at work, while not being seen as a good thing, would rarely be seen
as a criminal offence whereas to hit an adult in the workplace is a crime. These
examples show there is still much tolerance in society for violence against
children. This section will address three main areas of violence faced by
children: domestic violence or violence at home, corporal punishment at
school, and sexual violence.
maltreatment or exploitation - မတရားသငဖင့်ဆြ်ဆံငခင်း (သို ့မဟုတ်)

အငမတ်ထုတ်ငခင်း

legal guardians - တရားဝင်အုပ်ထိေ်းခွင့်ရသူများ

corporal punishment - ခန္ဓာြိုယ်ြိုအငပစ်နပးငခင်း

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forced marriages - အတင်းအြျပ်ထိမ်းငမားေြ်ထပ်နစငခင်း

initiation rites – ဇာတ်သွင်းငခင်း

spare the rod and spoil the child- ြနေးြိုအေိုေိုြ်ေိုေျှင်တုတ်နဆာင်ထားပါ

7.3.1 Children and Domestic Violence

The family should be a place where a child’s physical and emotional
safety is guaranteed. Yet, children do experience violence at home, often
committed by family members. Frequently, children experience cruel or
humiliating punishment, or neglect. In addition, they may be harshly
disciplined. Insults, name-calling, isolation, rejection, threats, emotional
indifference and belittling are all forms of violence which children may face
and which they should be protected from.
There are many challenges to preventing domestic violence against
children. First, such behaviour is deeply embedded in Southeast Asian culture –
it is widely believed that good parents discipline their children. Second, how
parents treat their children is largely regarded as a private matter. For anyone to
get involved, including neighbours or the police, would be seen as an invasion
of privacy. Third, domestic corporal punishment is not considered a serious
issue.
UN bodies such as UNICEF and the Committee on the Rights of the Child have
argued for a ban on corporal punishment at home, urging countries to change
their laws. However, only about a quarter of countries in the world have done
so, the majority in Europe.

7.3.2 Children and Violence at School

Violence in schools and educational settings is widespread in the region.
Recent surveys of high school students in Thailand found that over 60% had
experienced it. Teachers are allowed to hit students in three of the ten Southeast
Asian countries. In other countries, although unlawful, it is not specifically
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prohibited. In addition, children under institutional care in shelters, orphanages,

the workplace, or in custody can also face physical violence. Staff may
discipline children with beatings, restraints, or by imprisoning them. In some
institutions, children with disabilities face violence under the guise of
treatment, for example, by being subjected to electric shocks to control their
behaviour, or by being forced to take drugs to encourage obedience.

7.3.3 Children and Sexual Abuse

Sexual abuse is a particularly disturbing form of violence against

children. The World Health Organization in 2002 reported that there were
around 150 million female and 73 million male child victims of sexual violence
worldwide. More recent studies in 2011 found nearly 33% of girls in Africa
and 23% of girls in Asia had faced sexual abuse. While the rate for boys is
lower, it was still estimated (in 2011) that nearly 10% of boys had faced sexual
abuse. Most incidents were at the hands of someone they knew, often a
member of their own family. They also estimated that between 100 and 140
million girls and women had undergone some form of female genital
mutilation/cutting (FGM), including 3 million a year in Sub-Saharan Africa
alone, especially Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and Sierra Leone.

The problem of child sexual abuse has led to the introduction of laws on
the age of consent child sex, and rape laws to name but a few. The last two
crimes, in particular, face harsh penalties but despite this, the sexual abuse of
children is still prevalent in all Southeast Asian countries. Laws on these
crimes only came into force in the 1960s, with many countries in the region
either having no legislation against child sex, or ignoring the ones they did
have. Child marriages and underage sex workers were especially common in
Southeast Asia in the early 1900s and before. Unfortunately, some forms of
child sexual abuse (like child marriage) have escaped legal intervention. Child
marriages are prevalent in South Asia with girls as young as twelve being
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married off by their parents in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh. Many

women in rural India are married before they reach adulthood.

Another troubling issue addressed by the Optional Protocol on the sale

of children concerns the commercial exploitation of children, which often takes
the form of child prostitution or pornography. Some Southeast Asian countries
have reported particular problems with child prostitution – for example, in
2007, ECPAT estimated there were around 60,000 child prostitutes in
Philippines. Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia also have similar problems
although not on the same scale as the Philippines.

sexual violence - ေိင်ပိုင်ဆိုင်ရာနိင

ု ်ထြ်စီးေင်းမှု

harsh penalties - ကြီးနေးနသာငပစ်ေဏ်များ

7.4 The Right to Eduation

The right to education is a critical human right relevant to all children,

and is found in Art. 28 of the CRC, as well as in other treaties such as the
ICESCR, MWC, and CEDAW. All these say that primary level education must
be available to all children, regardless of their nationality, gender, or any other
category. But just getting children into school is not enough as quality and
safety standards must also be met. This section will only address a child’s right
to primary and high school education as university education almost always
only applies to adults.

7.4.1 Elements of the Right to Education

The right to education depends on the stage and type of education and
can be divided into three stages: the right to primary education (for children
aged between around 5-12), the right to secondary or high school education
(for children aged around 12-18), and the right to tertiary, university, or
vocational education (for those over 18). Primary education must be free and
compulsory. That is, every child aged between 5-12 (although the age varies
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slightly throughout the region), must have access to free primary education.
Children cannot be denied primary education because they do not speak the
language, or they are children of migrant workers, or they are refugees. Every
child must have a free primary education.
In addition, high school education must be available and accessible to
every child but it does not have to be compulsory or free. Having said this, the
majority of Southeast Asian countries have both compulsory and free high
schools although the amount of compulsory education in the region does vary
between States. The levels of compulsory education can be as little as only six
or primary education being compulsory, such as in Myanmar. It can be up to
nine years, or primary school plus the first three years of high school until the
student reaches about fifteen. Many countries aim for twelve years which
includes high school as well. In Southeast Asia, most countries provide nine
years of compulsory education although Myanmar and Cambodia have limited
this to six, making eleven or twelve the average school leaving age. Schooling
is particularly important because it reduces child labour. If children can leave
school at eleven, the chances are they will look for work. An additional
problem is that an eleven year old but may not be able to legally work until
they are fourteen or fifteen, so the child will face three years of unprotected
labour. Obviously, the answer should be, not to lower the minimum working
age, but to increase the years of compulsory education.
Rights to education encompass many different issues and activities,
from simply getting an education, to the quality of education itself. Laws and
policies on compulsory education will not necessarily ensure children get
access to schools, nor if they get access they receive a decent education. State
duties have been summarized in the 4A framework, which was devised by the
Special Rapporteur on education, Katarine Tomascvski, and may also be found
in ICESCR General Comment 13. The rest of this section will examine the
right to education in the region by examining the 4A standards.
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a decent education - နြာင်းမွေ်နသာပညာနရး

4A standards - A နေးခုငဖင့်သတ်မှတ်ထားနသာစံနှုေ်း

7.4.2 Availability and Accessibility of Education in Southeast Asia

While primary schooling may be widely available in the region, this
does not mean all children will go to school. The availability of education -
which basically translates to enough school places for all children in the
country - requires governments to allocate resources to build enough schools
and to train enough teachers. Accessibility seems to be the main reason
children miss out on school, in that places in the class may be available but
something like the cost, distance, the need to work, or language issues prevents
a child from attending. For developing countries, this dropout rate can mainly
be attributed to poverty (children forced to leave school to work), or cost (the
school is too expensive to attend), or quality (teaching standards are so low,
children don’t want to go).
The reasons children do not finish school vary. A major factor is
economic – some parents are so poor, they cannot afford to send children to
school even if they’re free as additional costs, such as uniforms, books, lunch,
travel, and pencils, may add up. As such, governments should ensure education
is accessible by also providing free uniforms, food, and transport. There are
also cases where the family is so poor, the child must work to help support the
family.

7.4.3 Acceptable and Adaptable Education

The UDHR defines the quality of education as the “full development of
the human personality and the strengthening of respect for human rights and
fundamental freedoms.” This view is also found in the ICESCR (Art. 13), and
was further expanded in Art. 29 of the CRC to include respect for a child’s
parent’s culture and values, responsible social views, and respect for the
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environment. Quality of education covers elements such as the curriculum, the

standard of schoolrooms and other facilities, and the quality of teachers.
As regards the curriculum, children should be educated to enable them
to contribute to society. Although the exact content of curricula will vary
between countries, basic literacy and numeracy are considered vital, as are
science and social science.
Curriculum aside, other factors which define the quality of education include:
School facilities: adequately sized classrooms with tables, chairs,
blackboards, and other facilities such as playgrounds, toilets, and shelter from
the weather
Qualified teachers: teachers have the necessary training
Access to information: a library, books to assist education, and other
sources of information
A safe and non-discriminatory learning environment: children
should feel safe from bullying, be able to reach school safely, and girls should
not feel threatened by boys or male teachers
Inclusive teaching methods: children should be encouraged to ask
questions and be curious. They should be allowed to participate in all activities
and their education should include activities which encourages their learning
and socializing.
basic literacy and numeracy- အနငခခံစာတတ်နငမာြ်မှုနှင့်ဂဏေ်းတတ်နငမာြ်မှု

School facilities - စာသင်နြျာင်းရှိပံ့ပိုးပစ္စည်းများ

Qualified teachers - အရည်အချင်းငပည့်ဝနသာဆရာ၊ဆရာမများ

Access to information - သတင်းအချြ်အေြ်များြိုေြ်ေှမ်းမှန

ီ ိုင်ငခင်း

A safe and non-discriminatory

learning environment - ေုံငခုံ၍ခွဲငခားမှုမရှိနသာ သင် ြားနရးဝေ်းြျင်

Inclusive teaching methods - အားေုံးပါဝင်နသာသင် ြားနရးစေစ်

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7.5 Juvenile Justice

States face many challenges when dealing with children who are in
conflict with the law. According to Art. 40 of the CRC, children in the justice
system should have their rights protected in line with the CRC General
Principles, by promoting certain practices to ensure children’s rights while in
the justice system. These are:
Diversion: keeping children out of the juvenile justice system and
avoiding juvenile detention should be a priority
Restorative justice: making the objective of justice the restoration of
peace and human rights to the victim, perpetrator, and community
Community-based rehabilitation: reintegrating the child back into the
family and community to avoid further conflicts with the law
Other relevant international standards include the UN Guidelines for the
Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (the ‘Riyadh Guidelines’), the UN
Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (the
‘Beijing Rules’) and the UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of
their Liberty. Though juvenile justice is a relatively small concern in absolute
numbers, broader implications about the safety and security of children in the
community make it a significant one. Though in some cases children should
face justice, they are too often incarcerated for minor offences or otherwise
institutionalised, often leading them to commit more crimes. According to the
General Principles on the development of the child, the justice system should
be concerned about the impact of punishment has on a child’s development.
Diversion - ေမ်းန ြာင်းနငပာင်းငခင်း

Restorative justice - ငပေ်ေည်ရှင်သေ်နရးသို ့ဦးတည်နသာ တရားစီရင်နရး

Community-based rehabilitation- ေူထုအနငခငပုငပေ်ေည်ထူနထာင်နရး

Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency - သြ်ငယ်ဆိုးသွမ်းငပစ်မှုများြိုတား

ဆီးငခင်းဆိုင်ရာ ြုေသမဂ္ဂ၏ေမ်းညွေ်ချြ်များ
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UN Standard Minimum Rules for the

Administration of Juvenile Justice - သြ်ငယ်ငပစ်မှုတရားစီရင်နရး

ြိုစီမံရေ်အတွြ်ြုေသမဂ္ဂ၏စံသတ်မှတ်ချြ် အေိမ့်ဆုံးစည်းမျဉ်းစည်းြမ်းများ

UN Rules for the Protection of

Juveniles Deprived of their Liberty - ေူငယ်တို ့၏ေွတ်ေပ်ခွင့်ြိုမဆုံးရှုံး

နစနအာင်အြာအြွယ်ငပုနပးထားနသာြုေသမဂ္ဂစည်းမျဉ်းစည်းြမ်းများ

7.5.1 Laws of Juvenile Justice

Juvenile justice systems are still undergoing development. The system
itself consists of the laws recognizing crimes and punishments for minors, the
police and courts which apprehend juveniles and put them on trial, and the
detention centres which incarcerate them. Across Southeast Asia, the number
of juvenile offenders is relatively small. Reports estimate that around 70,000
children are charged with a crime a year leading to about 20,000 incarcerations.
As a comparison, USA (which has about half the population of Southeast Asia)
detains 5 times as many juveniles. Not only do juveniles in Southeast Asia
commit less crime, the crimes tend to be minor such as such as robbery and
vagrancy.
A central element of juvenile justice laws concerns the age of criminal
responsibility, that is, the age at which a person can face criminal punishment.
Though CRC General Comment 10 considers above twelve children may be
responsible, though international standards tend to use fourteen as the
minimum standard. In all States there is flexibility in applying criminal law,
with police in most cases not treating young children as criminals even if they
are above the minimum age.

7.5.2 Juvenile Courts and Detention Centers

Children in conflict with the law enter a process of justice which starts
with the arrest, interrogation, and court appearance of the child, followed by
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the sanction if found guilty. A number of problems can occur during the
process. Firstly, many children are arrested for relatively minor crimes, the
most common crime is theft, which many have argued, is a survival crime – in
that, a child who is poor and hungry must steal in order to eat. The same can be
said for other survival crimes such as vagrancy where homeless children are
arrested for living on the streets. Following arrest, children may be vulnerable
to violence and mistreatment while in police detention, sometimes by the police
themselves, particularly those suspected of being gang members or repeat
offenders. There are situations where authority figures such as teachers and
police administer corporal punishment to children. A feature of a juvenile
justice system is the juvenile court. Ideally, juvenile courts should be separate
from the adult system with residing judges ideally expected to have experience
in dealing with minors during both trial and sentencing. In most countries,
these courts are closed to the public and juvenile records are often sealed once
the child reaches adulthood. But this is not the case in all Southeast Asian
countries. Cambodia has no separate court system for children (though children
are tried under a different law to adults), and less developed countries may
simply not have invested in the necessary resources to establish separate court
systems and specially trained judges and lawyers. Other problems may include:
 Access to legal aid: ensuring children will be adequately defended by
competent lawyers
 The separation of children and adults during the process: ensuring
children are not incarcerated with adults who may threaten them
 Avoiding the use of corporal punishment on children: Malaysia and
Singapore permit the use of caning as a punishment for children
 Adequate training for legal professionals: ensuring those working with
children receive training in areas like counselling and child psychology
 Disallowing the death penalty or life imprisonment: no State in
Southeast Asia permits children to face the death penalty
Once arrested, charged and convicted, the final concern of the juvenile
system will be the sanction the child faces. International best practice
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recommends diversion as the most suitable response. Diverting a child from

detention will not only ensure compliance with the child’s rights but also
ensures their safety with the aim of reintegrating them into society and
reducing their recidivism (or the child committing another crime). Examples of
diversion practices include releasing children to the supervision of their family,
releasing them on parole, or the use of alternative sanctions like community
service or counselling. It should be noted that diversion is not only used in
sentencing, but can be used throughout the whole justice process. Diversion
can occur at the time of arrest, so police avoid arresting the child. Court
appearances can be diverted from, so a child can face a panel which finds
justice without the need to sentence the child.
juvenile offenders - သြ်ငယ်များြျူးေွေ်သည့်ငပစ်မှု

Access to legal aid - တရားဥပနေအြူအညီြိုေြ်ေှမ်းမှီရယူနိုင်မှု

7.6 Children and Labour

Child labour can be seen as a violation which must be stopped, or a
useful, educational and productive activity for older children. The difference
depends on the age of the child, the type of labour, and the effect the labour has
on other parts of the child’s life. Child labour can be due to the level of
development in a child’s community, as children of poorer families will labour
more than the children of rich parents. It can also be where they live as in urban
centres children may help with housework, keep their rooms clean, or do
chores around the home while rural children may have to feed animals or do
agricultural work. Culture plays as role, too as labour can be defined by the
gender of the child, which girls having to do housework, or boys helping with
agricultural labour.
A duty of States is to protect children from unacceptable working
conditions. Article 32 of the CRC defines this as being “free from economic
and social exploitation.” As such, States should prevent children from
performing any work that is bad for their health, development, and education.
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A child who cannot go to school because they work all day in a factory is being
exploited. Not only must they miss school, their work may be unsafe,
preventing them from growing and developing as other children. A child who
goes unpaid or who is forced to work is exploited. It is these conditions that
need to be eliminated.
These goals can be achieved by introducing a minimum age of
employment, regulating work conditions, and banning certain types of labour to
name but a few options. It should be noted though that not all child labour is
bad – many teenagers like working part time to earn extra money for a new
phone or go to the movies, and experience work which may help them to learn
and develop new skills.
urban centres - မမို ့ငပ

unacceptable working conditions - မသင့်နေျာ်နသာေုပ်ငေ်းခွင်အနငခအနေများ

7.7 Children in Armed Conflict

7.7.1 Protection of Children from Armed Conflict under
International Law
The main laws governing the conduct of armed conduct, including the
protection of children in armed conflicts may be found in International
Humanitarian Law (IHL). Although limited protection is offered by the Geneva
Conventions (1949) and its protocols (1977), they only offer limited protection
for children. The CRC and its Optional Protocol have since gone further. The
reasons for this are partially historic as the Geneva Conventions predate the
CRC by 40 years, and children’s rights changed tremendously in that time. The
new rules were also designed to change the practice in many countries which
recruited soldiers from the age of sixteen.
The four Geneva Conventions (1949) asked for specific protection of
children in times of armed conflict, whether the child is classified as a civilian,
a victim, or a combatant. As a combatant, Art. 16 of the Third Geneva
Convention states that if the child is a prisoner of war, this should be taken into
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account by the Detaining State to ensure that the child’s good physical and
mental state. As a non-combatant during the conflict, or even in times of peace,
children are entitled to their rights. The Fourth Geneva Convention also
required States to protect children from the effects of war by actions such as
taking children from conflict areas and transferred to safety where they should
receive assistance such as medicine, food or clothing.
States should also protect children who are orphaned or separated from
their families because of the conflict, which may entail taking them to a safe
neutral country. Further, if a military occupies an area, the Occupying Power
must ensure the education of children. The 1977 protocols to the Geneva
Convention added provisions such as education and evacuation from conflict
areas. Additional Protocol I is the first treaty to limit the use of child soldiers,
stating:
Children who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a
direct part in hostilities and, in particular, they shall refrain from recruiting
them into the armed forces.
One important limitation to the protections was that they were limited to
children under the age of fifteen, but this was rectified by the CRC Optional
Protocol which set the minimum age to eighteen.
armed conflicts - ေြ်ေြ်ြိုင်ပဋိပြ္ခ

International Humanitarian Law (IHL) - အငပည်ငပည်ဆိုင်ရာေူသား

ချင်းစာောနသာဥပနေ

a prisoner of war - စစ်သံု ့ပေ်း

7.8 Right of Adolescents to Reproductive Health

One of the more challenging issues around child rights concerns
children and sex. Though States may have strict laws protecting children from
sexual violence, they have found it more difficult to address the issue of
teenagers engaging in consensual sex. States can no longer ignore the fact that
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teenagers engage in sexual activity because the average age of a child’s first
sexual experience is getting younger. As such, it becomes all the more
imperative to educate teens about responsibility and safe sex. Though the data
on this is inconclusive, because it is difficult to collect data on such a private
issue, it is estimated that across the ASEAN region about one third of children
(more boys than girls) have sex before the age of eighteen. States would much
rather pretend this does not exist, and they offer poor information and services
for children regarding safe sex. The main laws that address teenage sex concern
the age of consent – that is, the age a person can legally consent to having sex.
If someone has sex with a person under this age, it is considered statutory rape.
Increased teenage sexual activity can lead to many problems including
the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, non-consensual sex, and poor
reproductive health choices. Although the rate of HIV in Southeast Asian
teenagers is very low, it is worrying that many sexually active teenagers have
no access to contraception and are taking risks. In addition, other treatable
sexually transmitted diseases may go untreated because of poor knowledge or
embarrassment. As a result of this lack of information, there are concerns about
rising levels of teenage sexual abuse, especially relating to the definition of
consensual sex: is sex consensual if a girl is facing peer pressure or coercion?
States have shown the most concern on the issue of teenage pregnancy.
Teenage pregnancies occur for a variety of reasons. Girls may be married off
young, as in the case of Indonesia. But lack of information and understanding
about reproductive health must also take some of the blame as most Southeast
Asian parents tell their children very little about sex and sexuality. As a result,
many teenagers will not get access to contraception because it is either too
embarrassing to ask for, illegal to buy, or simply unavailable. Other issues may
arise from young males pressuring girls to engage in sex at an early age, or
from teenage girls dating older males. Some reports have also claimed that the
situation has been enhanced by the media because of internet pornography and
the increased sexuality of pop culture, although these factors are difficult to
prove.
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The consequences of pregnancies on teenage mothers can be huge

ranging from medical complications which are more likely when the mother is
young, to social stigma which can be especially destructive if a girl is forced to
leave school, to difficulties in finding employment later on in life. For these
reasons, States now wish to reduce their teenage pregnancy rates. Of course,
the most effective way to inform children of the risks would be through sex
education but laws and policy and reproductive health in the region are either
basic or non-existent.
The reality is that many children do have sex at an early age so States
should plan accordingly by ensuring they know about safe sex and educating
them on the meaning of consensual sex which will hopefully instill both boys
and girls with enough confidence to wait until they feel ready before having
sex.
teenage sexual abuse - ဆယ်နြျာ်သြ်အရွယ်ေိင်ပိုင်ဆိုင်ရာအနိုင်ြျင့်မှု

teenage pregnancy rates - ဆယ်နြျာ်သြ်အရွယ်ြိုယ်ဝေ်နဆာင်မှုနှုေ်း

Conclusion
This chapter has detailed the key elements of children’s rights, and
addressed specific areas such as education, work, armed conflict, and
reproductive health. While nearly universal, there are still many areas where
the understanding of children’s rights, and the protection of children from
violence and discrimination, could be improved. Some improvements to better
protect children from violence and abuse will be legal. Other improvements
like getting children to attend school and not labour are economic. Finally
cultural changes forged at community level will allow children to participate
more fully in their own futures, in particular, by contributing their own ideas
and views.