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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2010
We have looked at the protection offered to children in conflict situations by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Additional Protocols of 1977. The principle that children are particularly vulnerable and in need of special protection has been developed in these provisions.
When the idea of a Convention on the Rights of the Child was first put forward there were debates about whether this was the best way to proceed. The International Union for Child Welfare expressed reservations about the Polish draft proposal stressing the legal difference between a Declaration and a Convention. Although a Convention is theoretically stronger than a Declaration because it is legally binding, experience has shown that a Declaration adopted unanimously has a greater moral impact than a Convention only ratified by a few countries.
Evi Underhill in a paper (undated) “Comments on the Draft Convention on the Rights of the Child” posed not only the question whether Conventions are necessary but also whether they are effective or implemented and if they correspond to the large variety of national customs, political, economic and legal structures.
Certainly, concern has been expressed about the lack of geographical representation of Member States attending the working group which is drafting the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In the meantime some NGOs are urging that the drafting process should be speeded up.
* (From: “What's Fair. The Geneva Conventions”. The Canadian Red Cross Society, 1985.)Google Scholar
1 Enquiries also arise, of course, out of natural disasters; in fact any situation which creates child victims.
2 Report on Child Victims of Armed Conflicts, NGO Forum, Rome, April 28, 1984, Rädda Barnen International, 1984.
3 The Work of the ICRC for the Benefit of Civilian Detainees in German Concentration Camps between 1939 and 1945. The International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva 1975.
4 Special protection and medical care are extended to children even prior to birth but for the purposes of this paper we will give our attention to babies and children only.
5 Anna Freud and Dorothy Burlington in Zwingmann, Ch. and M. Pfister-Ammende: Uprooting and after… 1973 as reported in ISS Seminar on Unaccompanied Minor Refugees in European Resettlement Countries, Frankfurt, March 1984.
6 Some governments have delegated this responsibility to their National Red Cross or Red Crescent Society (for example, Germany and Holland). In the U.K., immediately after the Second World War the British Red Cross was recognized as the National Tracing Bureau for missing persons in the U.K. and Northern Ireland although today its status is unofficial.
7 Such work continues long after the end of the conflict. Over 20% of the work of the Central Tracing Agency of the ICRC still pertains to persons—many of them children—separated as a result of the Second World War.
8 There has been some concern expressed about the possibility of including details on the child's card which might endanger him or her if it fell into the hands of those who might discriminate in the treatment of civilians.
9 Protection of War Victims, Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions by H.S. Levie, Oceana Publishers, 1979, Vol. IV.
10 Perhaps it might be mentioned here that, under Art. II, e, the UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide of December 9, 1948, it is prohibited to forcibly transfer children of one national, ethnical, racial or religious group to another group with the intent to destroy that group. The International Tracing Service in Arolsen, West Germany, holds a Children's Archives and continues to receive a few enquiries concerning “Lebensborn”.
11 The wording “all feasible measures” acknowledged that, particularly in occupied territories and in wars of national liberation, a total ban on the voluntary participation of children under 15 would not be realistic.
12 Protection of War Victims, Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions by H. S. Levie, Oceana Publishers, 1979, Vol. IV.
13 Protection of Children in International Humanitarian Law, paper read at the International Symposium “Children and War” at Siuntio Baths, Finland, March 1983, International Review of the Red Cross, May–June 1984.
14 The Reuniting of Families in Europe During and After the Second World War, International Review of the Red Cross, May–June 1980.
15 “Activities of the Hungarian Red Cross on behalf of Unaccompanied Children.” Background paper presented by the Hungarian Red Cross Society at a Central Tracing Agency Technical Seminar, Geneva, 4–10 November 1982.
16 The working group which preceded the 42nd session of the UN Commission on Human Rights (3 February–14 March 1986) adopted Article 20 on children in armed conflicts.
17 As of 28 February 1986.
