COMMITTEE ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD CONCLUDES SIXTY-SIXTH SESSION
The Committee on the Rights of the Child today concluded its sixty-sixth session after adopting its concluding observations and recommendations on the reports of India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Saint Lucia and the United Kingdom under the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child or its two Optional Protocols.
The concluding observations and recommendations on the reports will be available on the Committee’s webpage on 19 June as of 2 p.m.
During the session, the Committee discussed progress made in the process of the strengthening of human rights treaty bodies, in line with the General Assembly resolution 68/268, adopted in April 2014.
Nathalie Prouvez, Chief of the Rule of Law and Democracy Section, Research and Right to Development Division of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and representative of the United Nations Secretary-General, addressing the Committee’s opening meeting on 26 May, said that the General Assembly had decided to convene a high-level meeting on 20 November 2014 to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Convention of the Rights of the Child. The anniversary celebrations would rightly highlight the fact that the Convention on the Rights of the Child was the most ratified human rights treaty in history. Following the recent accession by the State of Palestine to the Convention and its Optional Protocol on children in armed conflict, commendably without reservations, there were now more States parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child than there were Member States of the United Nations.
The Committee is a body of independent experts formed in 1991 to monitor the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by its States parties. The Convention gives a comprehensive collection of children's rights the force of international law. The Committee also monitors implementation of two Optional Protocols to the Convention: on the involvement of children in armed conflict, and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography. A third Optional Protocol on a communications procedure was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 19 December 2011 and entered into force on 14 April 2014. It allows individual children to submit complaints about specific violations of their human rights under the Convention and its first two Optional Protocols.
The Committee will hold its sixty-seventh session from 1 to 19 September 2014 at the Palais Wilson in Geneva, when it will consider the reports of Croatia, Fiji, Hungary, Morocco, Singapore and Venezuela under the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols on the involvement of children in armed conflict, and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.
For use of the information media; not an official record
CRC14/012E