Press release: Children’s rights remain at risk according to 2024 HRMI data

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Despite consensus around the principle of children’s rights and progress on some outcomes over the past several decades, new data released by the Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI) reveal that children around the world remain at risk.

This is particularly true when examining economic and social rights. For example, despite general increases in educational attainment seen in international data, in countries around the world including, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Angola, Thailand, and New Zealand children are at risk for violations regarding access to and quality of education.

Unsurprisingly, historically marginalized groups including girls, racial and ethnic minorities, those of lower social or economic status, unhoused youth, and those with disabilities, face an even more difficult time reaching full enjoyment of rights. 

In India, Muslim children are discriminated against in schools for wearing hijab, girls are often unable to attend schools due to a lack of adequate toilet facilities, and educational systems are not always compatible for people with disabilities.

Across all economic and social rights in Bangladesh, ethnic minorities, Dalits, those in remote areas, women and girls, and other marginalized groups are particularly impacted.

This also highlights that beyond the right to education, data show similar issues across the rights to food, health, housing, and work. These rights are interconnected and interrelated.

In the United Kingdom, students with low social or economic status are impacted by the lack of free school meals. And minority racial and ethnic groups, along with homeless youth are unable to afford adequate food due to the increasing cost of living. Beyond food, single parents, particularly women, also struggle to meet basic requirements of health and housing.

In Nepal people with disabilities are vulnerable to neglect, not provided adequate healthcare, and struggle to access job opportunities.

Lack of access to vaccines and medicine in Mexico disproportionately impacts children.

In Mozambique, extremely high rates of respondents indicate that homeless youth, women and girls, single parent families, and those of law social and economic status are at risk of violations across all economic and social rights.

State actions that weaken labor laws protecting children and rising home prices have led to high rates of unhoused youth and right to work violations in the United States. This is particularly true for immigrant populations, racial minorities, and those of lower socioeconomic status.

Foreign housekeepers and childcare providers in Hong Kong are restricted in choosing their residence and work.

Despite more widespread coverage of children’s economic and social rights, the data reveal that violations are also present across civil and political rights. 

In Saudi Arabia, women and girls lack the right to self-expression, including the right to choose their own clothing. And non-violent protesters, including minors, are subject to violations across a range of rights related to safety from the state.

The ongoing crisis in Venezuela is certainly impacting economic and social rights but young people who live in poor neighborhoods are also subject to arbitrary arrest and extrajudicial execution.

Similarly in Australia, Indigenous people, refugees and asylum seekers, and immigrants are at risk not just across economic and social rights, but are also subject to arbitrary arrest, torture and ill-treatment, lack of freedom to association, expression, and participation in government

In the UK, children with special needs and disabilities are subject to ill-treatment with the inappropriate use of restraints and seclusion.

Women and girls are not included in decision-making at home, within villages, locally, or regionally in Vanuatu. Further, people with disabilities are not able to speak up and Indigenous people are denied information about their rights.

In Kazakhstan, children are victims or sexual abuse, and both women and children are victims of domestic violence, sometimes resulting in death where the abusers are not persecuted.

Children in the Democratic Republic of Congo have no autonomy and their consent is not considered in decision-making.

Given the range of violations and the variation in outcomes by country displayed in HRMI’s data, the need for new approaches to measuring children’s rights remains. Our children’s rights team, co-led by Elizabeth Kaletski and K. Anne Watson, is currently working to fill some of the gaps in existing measures.

They are using publicly available data and innovative statistical techniques to create preliminary measures of children’s aggregate rights, along with components of economic and social rights that cover 198 countries from 2000 to 2020 (more than double the time coverage of existing measures). More information continues to be necessary to hold governments accountable to their obligations under international law.

Notes to editors

A full media kit is available here: https://humanrightsmeasurement.org/media-kit-2024/

HRMI experts are available for comment.