Rights of the Child

Calls upon States parties to increase their efforts for the full implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child;

Urges States to review, adopt and update national legislation in line with their international human rights obligations and commitments to ensure that the digital environment is compatible with the rights set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocols thereto and other relevant human rights instruments;

Also urges States to ensure that the best interests of the child is a primary consideration in decision-making related to the rights of the child in the digital environment, by considering the critical importance of child rights impact assessments of relevant laws, standards and policies to evaluate their actual impact on the rights of the child, and encourages the implementation of the child rights impact assessment and safeguarding principles by businesses in the digital environment;

Urges States that have not yet done so to consider becoming parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocols thereto as a matter of priority and to implement them effectively, and encourages further efforts by the Secretary-General in this regard;

Urges States parties to withdraw reservations that are incompatible with the object and purpose of the Convention on the Rights of the Child or the Optional Protocols thereto and to consider reviewing regularly other reservations with a view to withdrawing them in accordance with the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action;

Calls upon States to ensure the enjoyment by all children of all their civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights without discrimination of any kind;

Calls upon States to address prevailing challenges to bridge the digital divide within and among countries, the gender, disability and age digital divides and the divide between rural and urban areas, including between developing and developed countries, and to urgently address the major impediments that developing countries face in accessing new technologies and to harness digital technologies for development, recalls the need to emphasize quality and equity of access to developing countries, to bridge digital and knowledge divides, using a multidimensional approach that includes speed, stability, affordability, language, training, capacity-building, local content and accessibility for persons with disabilities, and to promote the full enjoyment of human rights, including the right to be free from arbitrary or unlawful interference with their right to privacy, for every child, without discrimination of any kind, and urges the full respect, protection and fulfilment of human rights in providing and expanding access and bridging the digital divide;

Encourages States to promote the rights of the child in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,⁴⁰ in accordance with their obligations under international law and in the best interests of the child;

Urges States to improve the situation of children living in poverty, in particular extreme poverty, deprived of adequate nutritious food, clean drinking water and sanitation facilities, including for menstrual hygiene health and management, with limited or no access to basic physical and mental health-care services, adequate shelter, education, participation and protection, taking into account that, while a severe lack of goods and services hurts every human being, it is particularly threatening and harmful to children, leaving them unable to enjoy their rights, to reach their full potential and to participate as full members of society, and exposed to conditions that lead to increased violence;

Also urges States to ensure that no restrictions are placed on the exercise by children of their human rights, including to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, in the digital environment other than those that are lawful, necessary and proportionate;

Calls upon States to promote the use of digital identification systems that enable every child to be registered immediately after birth and to have a name and to have the right to be recognized by national authorities to facilitate access to essential services, especially for children in rural and remote areas, refugee and migrant children and those in the most vulnerable situations;

Also calls upon States to scale up scientifically accurate and age-appropriate comprehensive education, relevant to cultural contexts, that provides adolescent girls and boys and young women and men, in and out of school, consistent with their evolving capacities, and with appropriate direction and guidance from parents and legal guardians, with the best interests of the child as their basic concern, with information on sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention, gender equality and women’s empowerment, human rights, physical, psychological and pubertal development and power in relationships between women and men, to enable them to build self-esteem and foster informed decision-making, communication and risk reduction skills and to develop respectful relationships, in full partnership with young people, parents, legal guardians, caregivers, educators and health-care providers, in order to, inter alia, enable them protect themselves from HIV infection and other risks;

Further calls upon States to create opportunities for children’s inclusive and meaningful participation in decision-making processes in line with their evolving capacities, including girls and adolescent girls, children with disabilities, children belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, Indigenous children, and children in vulnerable situations and those who are hardest to reach, in all matters affecting them, including in relation to the digital environment, and for children to become agents of change within their communities, taking into account the importance of involving children’s organizations and child-led initiatives, by creating inclusive consultative mechanisms and ensuring that policy measures are developed on the basis of participatory, evidence-based decision-making processes that take into account the views of children and the best interests of the child;

Urges all States to respect, protect and fulfil the right of children, including children with disabilities and children in vulnerable situations, to express themselves freely and their right to be provided the opportunity to be heard in any proceeding affecting them, and to ensure that they have access to quality inclusive education and information in child-friendly and accessible formats, that their views are given due weight and that they are included in decision-making processes, in accordance with their age and maturity, in all matters affecting them, including those relating to the digital environment;

Urges States to ensure that all schools are safe and free from violence, such as bullying, including cyberbullying, sexual harassment, including peer-to-peer sexual harassment, online and offline, and that they address all forms of violence against children, with particular attention to girls and children with disabilities and in vulnerable situations;

Urges States to take comprehensive, multisectoral, coordinated, effective and gender-responsive measures to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against all children and to address structural and underlying causes and risk factors, including through enhanced prevention measures, research and strengthened coordination and monitoring and evaluation, implementing, in partnership with all relevant stakeholders, effective violence prevention and response activities in schools and communities, educating children from a young age regarding the importance of treating all people with dignity and respect, and designing educational programmes and teaching materials that support consent, non-violent behaviour, respect for boundaries and what constitutes unacceptable behaviour and how to report it, that eliminate gender stereotypes and negative social norms, build self-esteem and informed decision-making and communication skills and promote the development of respectful relationships based on gender equality, inclusion and respect for human rights;

Calls upon States to promote the provision of accessible, gender-responsive and age-appropriate information to children, including children with disabilities, on their rights, including through human rights education programmes as well as equal access to technologies that provide them with information and material from a diversity of national and international sources, especially those aimed at the promotion of their social, spiritual and moral well-being, and physical and mental health, and the protection of their rights;

Also calls upon States to accelerate efforts to eliminate all barriers to the equal enjoyment by girls of their right to education, to address gender-based discrimination, negative social norms and gender stereotypes in education systems, including in curricula, textbooks and teaching methodologies, and to fight all forms of violence, including sexual harassment and school-related sexual and gender-based violence, in and out of schools and other educational settings;

Urges States to take immediate and effective measures to secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour and to end child labour in all its forms, by 2025 at the latest;

Calls upon States to scale up programming for girls, including education and skills development training for adolescent girls; to address gender-specific barriers to the equal enjoyment by girls of their right to education and access to quality education; to ensure access to gender-specific support services, including psychological, social and sexual and reproductive health-care services, and education, including in emergencies; and to ensure that girls’ opinions are heard, and that measures are taken to enable young women and girls to successfully grow into leadership positions in public and private spheres by ensuring their full and equal access to education, technology and skills development, leadership and mentorship programmes, increased technical and financial support, and protection from violence and discrimination;

Also calls upon States to ensure that child protection, including social protection and gender-sensitive mental health services, is recognized as essential and that it continues to be provided and be accessible, affordable and available to all children at all times, including through the use of digital technologies;

Encourages States to adopt and implement sustained and inclusive child-empowering, age-appropriate, disability-inclusive and gender-responsive non-formal and formal education programmes, providing children, parents, legal guardians, caregivers, teachers and other professionals working with and for children with skills relating to digital and data literacy, to promote awareness among children of the possible adverse consequences of exposure to risks relating to content, contact, conduct and contract, including cyberaggression, trafficking, sexual exploitation and abuse and other forms of violence that occur through or are amplified by the use of technology, recognizing a child who is a victim of online harm and responding appropriately, as well as coping strategies to reduce harm and strategies to protect their personal data and those of others and to build children’s social and emotional skills and resilience in order to ensure all children’s safety and their human rights in the digital context;

Calls upon States to invest equitably in technological infrastructure in schools and other learning settings, ensuring the availability and affordability of a sufficient number of devices, high-quality and high-speed broadband and a stable source of electricity, accessibility and the timely maintenance of school technologies;

Also calls upon States to support and invest in education, including human rights education, as a long-term and lifelong process, through which everyone learns equality, non-discrimination, non-violence, tolerance, inclusion and respect for the dignity of others and the means and methods of ensuring such respect in all societies, including in digital contexts, and to engage, educate, encourage and support the promotion of positive behaviour that addresses all forms of discrimination and violence that occur through or are amplified by the use of technology;

Urges States to stress the role and responsibility of online service providers in protecting children from online harm, especially child sexual exploitation and abuse;

Encourages States to urge businesses that have an impact on the enjoyment of children’s rights in relation to the digital environment to ensure that human rights are respected in the conception, design, development, deployment, evaluation and regulation of digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, and to ensure that they are subject to adequate safeguards and oversight that seek to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to businesses’ operations, products or services in order to promote an open, secure, stable, accessible and affordable digital technology environment for all children, and calls upon States to consider adopting legislation, regulations or policies to ensure that businesses address their responsibilities to respect children’s rights, safety and well-being;

Also encourages States to urge businesses that have an impact on the enjoyment of children’s rights in relation to the digital environment to prevent or mitigate adverse impacts on children’s rights that are directly linked to their design and operations, products or services and to establish and implement regulatory frameworks and promote industry codes and terms of services that adhere to the highest standards of ethics, privacy and safety in relation to the design, engineering, development, operation, distribution and marketing of their technological products and services and that respect, protect and fulfil the rights of the child;

Urges States to provide children whose rights have been violated or abused with access to effective and appropriate remedial victim support, as well as reparation and guarantees of non-repetition; and calls upon States and businesses to ensure the availability and accessibility of free-of-charge, safe, confidential, responsive and child-friendly reporting mechanisms;

Calls upon States to encourage business enterprises operating in the digital environment to undertake child rights due diligence and child rights impact assessments to guide mitigating measures, including for the protection of children’s physical and mental health and the impacts of the digital environment on children, and in this regard to effectively consider issues of gender and vulnerability and to identify, prevent and mitigate any risks posed by their products and services to children, and in this regard takes note of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” Framework;⁴¹

Encourages increased transparency by States and businesses to understand the impact of the use of digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, on children’s well-being and development, and to encourage support to independent monitoring of the fulfilment of the rights of the child in the digital environment;

Encourages States to build and strengthen multi-stakeholder platforms with the participation of Governments, civil society and representatives of industry, in particular the digital technology sector, in consultation with children themselves and, where appropriate, their parents or legal guardians, with a view to promoting multi-stakeholder cooperation in the elaboration and implementation of policies to protect, empower and inform children and prevent violence that occurs through or is amplified by the use of technology;

Urges States to prohibit the unlawful digital surveillance of children, with due regard to commercial settings and educational and care settings, to work towards enabling secure communications and the protection of individual users against arbitrary or unlawful interference with their privacy, including by developing technical solutions with any restrictions thereon complying with the obligations of States under relevant international human rights instruments;

Calls upon States to ensure that national legislation on data protection and privacy is in accordance with their international human rights obligations and allows law enforcement, social welfare and judicial authorities to conduct effective and appropriate investigations and prosecutions to combat violations and abuses of the rights of the child, and to raise awareness of the importance of activities and compliance with the law by private actors, notably those in the digital industry, to strengthen those efforts;

Urges States to take appropriate measures regarding the collection, processing and sharing of children’s personal data, addressing exploitative marketing practices aimed at children and adopting standards that identify, define and prohibit practices that manipulate or interfere with children’s rights in the digital environment, including by requiring data protection, privacy-by-design, safety-by-design and other regulatory measures to ensure that businesses do not target children using techniques designed to prioritize commercial interests over those of the child, putting in place adequate safeguards that seek to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or services, and taking measures to ensure that access to and use of essential digital services and infrastructure by children is based on the least privacy-intrusive means available for their intended purpose;

Calls upon States and private entities to ensure that children are protected against economic exploitation, including by reducing children’s exposure to marketing and commercial communication, and to ensure that the uses of automated processes of information filtering, profiling, marketing and decision-making do not supplant, manipulate or interfere with children’s ability to form and express their opinions in the digital environment;

Urges States to take measures to ensure that children are informed, in a child-friendly, easily accessible and age-appropriate way, about the collection and use of their data online, and encourages private actors in the technology sector to adhere to the highest international standards and best practices for safety, privacy and security by design, taking into account the particular needs of children;

Encourages States to make efforts towards mainstreaming children’s needs in all digital policies, and public and private investment, providing all children with equal and effective access to age-appropriate information, and information on their rights, and to high-quality online resources, including on digital skills and literacy, and protecting children from online risks and harm, as well as arbitrary or unlawful interference with their privacy on social media, as well as preventing children’s exposure to violent and sexual content, gambling, exploitation and abuse, and the promotion of or incitement to life-threatening activities;

Calls upon all States to protect the rights of the child and to ensure, for children belonging to national or ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities and migrant children, children affected by armed conflict, Indigenous children, children of African descent, internally displaced children and children with disabilities, the enjoyment of all their rights as well as access to health-care services, social services, social protection and accessible and inclusive education on an equal basis with others, and to ensure that all such children, in particular unaccompanied migrant children, internally displaced children and those who are victims of violence and exploitation, receive special protection and assistance and that the best interests of the child are a primary consideration in their policies of integration, return and family reunification;

Encourages States to adopt and strengthen clear and comprehensive measures, including legislative and policy measures, taking into account the best interests of the child, to prevent and protect children from bullying, including cyberbullying and the dissemination of personal sexually explicit content, and provide for safe and child-sensitive counselling and reporting procedures and safeguards for the rights of affected children;

Calls upon States to ensure the legal protection of children from violence, both online and offline, in a manner consistent with their obligations under international law, including international human rights law, and to criminalize relevant conduct related to violence against children online and offline, including but not limited to forms of sexual exploitation and abuse of children, such as child grooming, sexual extortion, the streaming of child abuse, the possession or distribution of, access to, or exchange or production of or payment for child sexual abuse material and the viewing, conducting or facilitation of children’s participation in live sexual abuses or exploitation transmitted through digital technologies, in addition to the use of digital technology in the recruitment or use of children by armed groups and in the context of child trafficking;

Also calls upon States to develop coherent and coordinated protection systems and to provide universal access to quality comprehensive social, physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health, and legal and counselling services for all victims and survivors, to ensure their full recovery and reintegration into society, and to strengthen social welfare systems and effective service delivery for children affected by violence, in particular in the justice, education and health sectors;

Calls upon States to ensure that all those responsible for or who attempt to commit crimes against children that occur through or are amplified by the use of technology are held accountable and brought to justice in order to fight impunity, taking into account that such crimes are often multi-jurisdictional and transnational in nature;

Urges States to promote and protect the rights of the child against sexual exploitation and sexual and gender-based violence, including in digital contexts, through the adoption of relevant legislation to prevent these acts as well as combat them through the detection of child sexual abuse material and its immediate removal from the Internet;

Urges all States, requests United Nations agencies, funds and programmes and invites regional organizations and civil society, including non-governmental organizations, to cooperate with the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children in promoting the further implementation of the recommendations of the United Nations study on violence against children and in supporting Member States in the context of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, encourages States to provide support to the Special Representative, including adequate voluntary financial support for the continued, effective and independent performance of her mandate, and invites organizations, including the private sector, to provide voluntary contributions for that purpose;