Source: United Nations – Geneva
The Committee on the Rights of the Child this morning opened its ninety-ninth session, which is being held in Geneva from 12 to 30 May, during which the Committee will review reports on the efforts to adhere to the Convention on the Rights of the Child of Brazil, Indonesia, Iraq, Norway, Qatar and Romania, as well as on Brazil’s efforts to implement the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.
In an opening statement, Andrea Ori, Chief, Groups in Focus Section, Human Rights Council and Treaty Mechanisms Division, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Representative of the Secretary-General, said the Committee’s work was more crucial than ever. Significant progress in children’s rights, which seemed secure until recently, was now severely disrupted. Children worldwide were increasingly affected by a convergence of crises, including economic downturns, climate change, public health emergencies, and armed conflicts.
Mr. Ori warned that the recent global funding crisis exacerbated the situation of children, with a daunting forecast ahead. The United Nations Children’s Fund had projected that in 2025, at least 14 million children would experience interruptions in vital nutrition support and services due to current and anticipated funding cuts, putting them at increased risk of severe malnutrition and death. The capacity to vaccinate over 15 million vulnerable children against measles in fragile and conflict-affected countries would also be drastically reduced.
Considering the troubling outlook for children, Mr. Ori said, there was an urgent need for coordinated global efforts to safeguard children’s rights and ensure their well-being. Now, more than ever, it was crucial for governments to fulfil their commitments under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Mr. Ori concluded by wishing the Committee all the best for a productive session.
During the meeting, the Committee elected a new Chair and Bureau. Sopio Kiladze (Georgia) was elected as Chair, and Cephas Lumina (Zambia), Thuwayba Al Barwani (Oman), Philip D. Jaffe (Switzerland), and Mary Beloff (Argentina) were elected as Vice-Chairs.
The Committee also welcomed four new members – Timothy. P.T. Ekesa (Kenya), Mariana Ianachevici (Republic of Moldova), Juliana Scerri Ferrante (Malta), and Zeinebou Taleb Moussa (Mauritania) – and welcomed back Mr. Lumina, who previously served as a member from 2017 to 2021. They made their solemn declaration.
Ms. Kiladze said it was a pleasure and honour to be elected as Chair of the Committee. She said her election came at a difficult time in which many children around the world were affected by violations of their rights. She said it was vital that the Committee continued to work for the protection of the rights of children everywhere.
Before adopting the session’s agenda, the Committee also heard statements from representatives of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations Children’s Fund, Child Rights Connect, and the Secretary of the Committee.
Summaries of the public meetings of the Committee can be found here, and webcasts of the public meetings can be found here. The programme of work of the Committee’s ninety-ninth session and other documents related to the session can be found here.
The Committee will next meet in public at 3 p.m. this afternoon to consider the seventh periodic report of Norway (CRC/C/NOR/7).
Statements
ANDREA ORI, Chief, Groups in Focus Section, Human Rights Council and Treaty Mechanisms Division, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Representative of the Secretary-General, welcomed the four new members of the Committee: Timothy Ekesa (Kenya), Mariana Ianachevici (Republic of Moldova), Juliana Scerri Ferrante (Malta), and Zeinebou Taleb Moussa (Mauritania), and the returning member Cephas Lumina (Zambia). Each member brought valuable and diverse experiences that would greatly enhance the Committee’s work. Additionally, he congratulated the members who had been re-elected for another term: Rinchen Chophel (Bhutan); Sopio Kiladze (Georgia); Benyam Dawit Mezmur (Ethiopia); and Benoit Van Keirsbilck (Belgium).
The Committee’s work was more crucial than ever. Significant progress in children’s rights, particularly in health and education, which seemed secure until recently, was now severely disrupted. Children worldwide were increasingly affected by a convergence of crises, including economic downturns, climate change, public health emergencies, and armed conflicts. The recent global funding crisis exacerbated their situation, with a daunting forecast ahead.
The United Nations Children’s Fund had projected that in 2025, at least 14 million children would experience interruptions in vital nutrition support and services due to current and anticipated funding cuts, putting them at increased risk of severe malnutrition and death. The capacity to vaccinate over 15 million vulnerable children against measles in fragile and conflict-affected countries would be drastically reduced. Immunisation services, disease surveillance, and outbreak responses in nearly 50 countries were already facing disruptions.
Mr. Ori said, quoting the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “human rights are like air: we need them to live— but we only notice them when we are suffocating.” Today, countless children worldwide were suffocating as their rights were denied and overlooked. Considering the troubling outlook for children, there was an urgent need for coordinated global efforts to safeguard their rights and ensure their well-being. Now, more than ever, it was crucial for governments to fulfil their commitments under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The global funding crisis was also affecting the Committee’s work directly. Its pre-sessional working group, scheduled to be held after this session, was cancelled as funding was not available. Altogether, 15 sessions across 10 treaty bodies were at stake, and it was highly likely that, for those treaty bodies with three sessions, the Office of the High Commissioner would not be able to secure the funding to hold the third session. The lack of predictability and the piecemeal approach with last-minute confirmation created huge uncertainty, led to wasted time and effort, and higher costs.
The Office of the High Commissioner had received only 73 per cent of its approved regular budget in 2025, and 87 per cent of its approved regular budget in 2024. As a result, the United Nations Secretariat was implementing a hiring freeze until August 2025. This would impact on regular budget posts approved to support the treaty body system, which currently could not be filled. The Secretariat was in a similar situation last year, and this had led to increased backlogs in reviewing State party reports and backlogs in registering and analysing individual communications.
The United Nations Office at Geneva’s conference services had also adopted cash conservation measures, which would impact on the conference support provided to the United Nations human rights treaty bodies, particularly in terms of documentation, meeting time, and interpretation, with an overall reduction of 10 per cent. This meant treaty bodies’ mandated activities would be even more affected in 2025 than in 2024, impacting their ability to have dialogues with States parties and to make decisions on individual communications, resulting in further delays and backlogs. The Office was also forced to significantly reduce treaty body capacity building activities, which provided support for States to report to, and interact with, treaty bodies.
All this caused real damage to predictability, which was so important for States, civil society organizations and rights-holders to engage with treaty bodies. Given the overall reduction in funds and availability of support services, “business as usual” would no longer be possible and the treaty bodies needed to plan on doing less with less.
On a more positive note, the annual meeting of Chairpersons of human rights treaty bodies would be held in Geneva from 2 to 6 June. The Chairs would dedicate the meeting to the liquidity crisis, which was affecting the very existence of treaty bodies if they could no longer fulfil their mandates, and to discuss what could be done to increase predictability within the current financial and human constraints, including reviewing the decisions and recommendations from their last meeting and their working methods.
The 2025 full-day meeting on the rights of the child at the Human Rights Council on 13 March, which focused on early childhood development, featured speeches by children and an informal dialogue on the topic between a group of young people, Member States and the High Commissioner.
The first session of the Open Ended Inter-Governmental Working Group on an Optional Protocol to the Convention on education would be held from 1 to 5 September in Geneva. The Office was working closely with the sponsors of the resolution to establish the modalities for the process leading up to the first session of the Inter-Governmental Working Group and its programme of work. A call for submissions was issued in March for the attention of States, civil society, United Nations agencies and children, for whom a toolkit for consultations had been prepared.
In conclusion, Mr. Ori wished the Committee all the best for a productive session, saying that he looked forward to working with the new Chair and Bureau of the Committee for the next two years.
SOPIO KILADZE, newly elected Committee Chair, said it was a pleasure and honour to be elected as Chair of the Committee. She said her election came at a difficult time in which many children around the world were affected by violations of their rights. It was vital that the Committee continued to work for the protection of the rights of children everywhere.
Regarding the session’s agenda, Ms. Kiladze said that the Committee would hold dialogues to consider the reports of six States parties: Brazil, Indonesia, Iraq, Norway, Qatar and Romania. The scheduled review of Pakistan was postponed to a later session at the request of the State party.
During the session, the Committee would continue its discussions on how its cooperation with various relevant bodies could be further strengthened to enhance the promotion and protection of the rights of the child. It would also discuss the organisation of its future work and consideration of States parties’ reports, focusing on issues related to its methods of work and follow-up to the treaty body strengthening process.
In addition, the Committee would consider any communication and information it had received through its communication procedure and would continue to consider how to integrate days of general discussion into the process of developing general comments. The Committee would also continue its work on its new general comment on children’s right to access to justice and to an effective remedy.
ALLEGRA FRANCHETTI, Secretary of the Committee, said that no reports had been received under the Convention since the last session, with the total number of reports pending consideration remaining at 62. The total number of ratifications of the Convention remained at 196, while 64 periodic reports were overdue, of which 10 for more than five years and five for more than 10 years.
There had been one new accession to an Optional Protocol to the Convention since the last session, with Estonia acceding to the Optional Protocol on a communications procedure. The total number of ratifications of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the involvement of children in armed conflict remained at 173, while ratifications of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography remained at 178, and ratifications of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on a communications procedure was now at 53.
No new reports had been received under any of the Optional Protocols. There were 37 initial reports overdue under the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict; and 47 overdue under the Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.
Statements by United Nations Bodies and Civil Society Representatives
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the current global political and financial environment was difficult and complex.
The Office introduced reports to be presented at the upcoming June session of the Human Rights Council related to children’s rights, including the second report of the High Commissioner on child rights mainstreaming, a report on the use of digital technologies to achieve universal birth registration, and a report on ensuring quality education for children.
The Office was also preparing a report on the rights of the child and violations of the human rights of children in armed conflicts, which would be presented at the September session of the Human Rights Council, and a report on the safety of the child in the digital environment, which would be presented at the Council in 2026.
In addition, the Office had held a capacity-building roundtable with Member States on 5 June on strengthening child participation at the Human Rights Council, and it continued to contribute to the civil society and academia-led process to develop global guidelines on child participation in global events, helping to convene two participatory surveys that had reached over 200 children worldwide.
The Office encouraged Committee members and other parties to participate in the Fifth World Conference on Justice for Children, to be held in Spain for 2 to 4 June. The Office would work with the Committee to protect children’s rights in this difficult time.
United Nations Children’s Fund commended the work of the Committee’s outgoing bureau and expressed its desire to work with the new Bureau and all Committee Experts. Perhaps more than ever, the Committee was meeting at a time of great constraint for the international human rights system. It was regrettable that the pre-sessional working group was cancelled. The Fund was discussing with the Committee regarding alternative means of engaging with children and civil society from the countries concerned in preparation for the next session.
Armed conflicts, climate change, poverty, violence and inequalities, among other trends, continued to deprive millions of children of their rights, and the mere recognition that children had rights continued to be challenged in all parts of the world. There was a normative pushback against children’s rights at the last Human Rights Council. Most statements focused exclusively on children’s vulnerability and their right to protection, and did not highlight children’s agency, empowerment and participation. In negotiations on a resolution on child rights defenders, there was much resistance to attempts to recognise their contributions.
The Fund had held consultations with more than 7,000 children related to the Committee’s general comment 27 on children’s right to access to justice and to an effective remedy and had worked to develop a child-friendly version of the draft general comment.
The Fund had also worked on a child rights training course for its staff and had updated its handbook on the jurisprudence of the Committee. Later in the year, the Fund would start to develop guidance on general measures of implementation, following the online guidance on children’s rights legislative reform launched last year.
Child Rights Connect expressed its renewed commitment to supporting the Committee. It welcomed the holding of the session, despite uncertainty due to the United Nations’ liquidity crisis, and requested the Committee to discuss the organisation of its future work, including how and when it would engage with children and civil society.
Child Rights Connect raised deep concern about the impact on children of the funding crisis affecting the child rights sector. Despite these circumstances, it continued to collaborate with stakeholders and carry out its mandate. It welcomed the development of general comment 27, and had mobilised children and civil society around it, producing a methodology for consulting with children along with supporting child-friendly materials. It had also recently launched a global survey on the digital protection of child human rights defenders, which collected the opinions and experiences of children who had stood up to protect human rights in the digital space.
At a time when manifold crises affected children of the world, all persons holding mandates for children needed to strengthen joint efforts and find new ways of working with creativity to better serve children.
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