The Plight of Street Children

Urges Governments to continue actively to seek comprehensive solutions to tackle the problems of street children and to take measures to restore their full participation in society and to provide, inter alia, adequate nutrition, shelter, health care and education;

Strongly urges Governments to respect fundamental human rights, particularly the right to life, and to take urgent measures to prevent the killing of street children and to combat violence and torture against street children;

Calls upon all States that have not done so to become parties to the Convention as a matter of priority;

Calls upon the international community to support, through effective international cooperation, the efforts of States to improve the situation of street children, and encourages States parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in preparing their reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, to bear this problem in mind and to consider requesting, or indicating their need for, technical advice and assistance for initiatives aimed at improving the situation of street children, in accordance with article 45 of the Convention;

Invites the Committee on the Rights of the Child to consider the possibility of a general comment on street children;

Recommends that the Committee on the Rights of the Child and other relevant treaty-monitoring bodies bear this growing problem in mind when examining reports from States parties;

Invites Governments, United Nations bodies and organizations and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations to cooperate among themselves and to ensure greater awareness and more effective action to solve the problem of street children by, among other measures, supporting development projects that can have a positive impact on the situation of street children;

Calls upon special rapporteurs, special representatives and working groups of the Commission on Human Rights and of the Subcommission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, within their mandates, to pay particular attention to the plight of street children;

Invites the Commission on Human Rights to examine this problem at its forty-ninth session;