UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold is credited with saying, in the 1950s, that the organization “was not founded to deliver us to paradise, but to keep us from hell.” Even if the UN is not as useful as it once was—especially now that hell is engulfing the entire planet—its existence is still vital.
Last week, a presidential decree authorizing the opening of a UNICEF global office in Istanbul was presented to the Turkish parliament. Key operations of the agency, such as emergency operations, human resources, and significant finance and administrative units, will be moved to the Istanbul office. The Turkish side claimed that this move is consistent with the nation’s humanitarian foreign policy and with Turkiye’s goal to establish Istanbul as a UN hub similar to New York and Geneva.
The UN organization UNICEF is in charge of helping children all across the world with humanitarian relief and development projects. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, a UN organization, is the most powerful entity for overseeing and upholding children’s rights internationally. UNICEF is also responsible for ensuring that children’s fundamental needs are met, promoting the preservation of children’s rights, and providing opportunities for children. In this regard, UNICEF Turkiye will offer education, child protection, and social protection services to thousands of families and children.
A global concern is children’s safety and protection, especially in light of the numerous new wars and geopolitical conflicts of the modern day. A growing number of youngsters are growing up in a world where daily violations of their fundamental rights are occurring. We have been inundated with heartbreaking accounts of children being abused, killed, and subjected to violence in recent years—tragedies that the world community has shamefully failed to stop.
43.3 million children are living in forced displacement and 468 million children are fighting for their lives in conflict zones. Beyond conflict zones, however, children’s rights are seriously threatened due to the prevalence of sexual and physical abuse of minors in many wealthy nations.
Every day brings new reports of some child’s terrible demise. For example, the August murder of 8-year-old Narin Guran in Turkiye sparked more worries about children’s safety because the incidence was not unique. In just the first half of 2024, at least 343 children in Turkiye lost their lives to avoidable causes, according to a report by the FISA Child Rights Center. According to the research, 95 of these youngsters died in car crashes, 32 committed suicide, and 33 perished in job accidents. These statistics clearly show that child labor is still a serious problem. The most concerning fact is that 23 of the kids had experienced violence of some kind.
It is quite disturbing because activists and media assert that there are thousands of unaccounted-for child cases, notwithstanding the difficulty in obtaining official data. After the earthquakes in Turkiye and Syria on February 6, 2023, worries about children’s safety and vulnerability have grown even more. A Turkish parliamentary commission investigating the earthquakes revealed that 1,118 of the surviving children were either missing or might have been abducted from Turkiye.
The protection of all children, particularly those who are child laborers, child soldiers, or victims of sexual or physical abuse, must be a top priority for the UN and all of its member nations. The protection of the rights of children who are refugees is equally essential. Not only that, but every year thousands of youngsters disappear or are abducted for a variety of reasons.
Another category of children denied basic rights is refugee children. Sadly, children make up about half of all refugees worldwide, despite making up less than one-third of the world’s population.
In accordance with a deal reached in November 2022 between Turkiye and the UN, the UN will establish an Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Istanbul. The world’s largest registered refugee population is currently found in Turkiye. Children require extra attention because they are part of refugee families. Humanitarian aid going from Turkey to Syria, where a large number of children are either internally displaced or lack basic necessities, will be expedited by the OCHA.
Globally, there is a systemic breakdown in child protection. Child rights is within the umbrella of human rights and international policy. Although Turkiye possesses the necessary tools to protect children of refugees, working with UN agencies is a big step toward strengthening child protection laws and making sure that children’s rights are given top priority on both national and international agendas. Turkiye can successfully address the core causes of child vulnerability, strengthen its policies, expand support networks, and create a more safe and equitable environment for all children—including refugee children—by collaborating closely with UN agencies.
In a loving home setting, children require secure and stable environments. A robust and long-lasting civil society is a crucial change agent in the direction of this goal. While the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees children’s rights in the broadest sense, nations, civil society groups, and communities bear a great deal of responsibility when it comes to the procedures for defending and upholding these rights. States must put into action effective measures. The defense of children’s rights is as important as addressing political, economic, and environmental challenges because these young people will make up our future.
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