by Allan Norman
This week, the UK Government finally announced it is to begin the process of lifting the Reservations it put in place when signing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This is a move that has been widely welcomed and commended, not least by UNICEF, and rightly so since it is a positive and beneficial step. Somewhat ungraciously, therefore, let me explain my reaction, that this is too little, too late.
Background
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is an international human rights standard, complementing and supplementing the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The UK signed up to the Convention, but recorded a number of Reservations, effectively a public statement that its commitment to the principles were limited in certain areas, notably relating to children subject to immigration control and children in the penal system.
Widespread concerns, in particular about children in immigration detention have fuelled calls for the Reservations to be lifted. The British Association of Social Workers is among those that have made such calls.
The announcement came as a one-liner in the final minute of this conference speech:
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Too little
We know the mantra that Every Child Matters. We may even be lulled into believing that this agenda, alongside the Childen Act 2004, places children's rights at the heart of children's policies. But it doesn't. In essence Every Child Matters is a programme for intervention in children's lives that does not have children's rights at its heart. This is apparent in the parliamentary debates on the Children Act 2004, such as that on 13th September 2004.
The government could have made the Convention the basis for Every Child Matters, but it chose not to do so. More generally, the government passed up the opportunity to make Convention Rights directly enforceable in the UK.
The limitations of the Every Child Matters agenda are apparent from reading the critiques that have been spawned: not only Child First, Migrant Second: Ensuring that Every Child Matters, published by ILPA, but also the likes of Every Disabled Child Matters.
Too late...
In the intervening period since the Convention was ratified, we have continued to detain children. Not only those subject to immigration control, or those in the criminal justice system, but also British Citizen children caught up in the tumult of the government's immigration policy. The government's justification for this particular anomaly can only be described as one of the most jaw-dropping examples of New Labour Doublethink (Hansard, 21 July 2008):
"...where a foreign national subject to enforced removal is parent to a child with British citizenship, it is possible for that child to accompany the parent through the enforcement process on a voluntary basis... The child's status in the removal centre would effectively be that of a guest..."
...or not a moment too soon!
Social Work, in particular, must not miss a trick here. UNICEF's applause came for "the decision by the British government to grant children seeking asylum, migrant children, and those who have been trafficked into the UK the same rights as British children, including their right to education, health care and social services." It is imperative we remember this commitment when any attempt is made to progress a separate and different system for unaccompanied asylum seeking children in particular.
Allan Norman is Principal Social Worker & Solicitor at Celtic Knot (www.celticknot.org.uk), an independent law firm and social work practice.
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