Reflecting on 100 Years of Children’s Rights: A conversation with Warren Binford

Did you know that international human rights began in 1924 with the recognition of the inherent rights of children by the League of Nations? In this episode of Radio Kempe, Kendall Marlowe interviews Warren Binford about the history of international children’s rights, how it advanced over the last 100 years, and what it means for children today, including those in the child welfare system. The episode celebrates the 100th anniversary of international children’s rights and is dedicated to the memory of Gary B. Melton.

Transcript

0:08 
Welcome and welcome back. 

 
0:11 
This is Radio Camp. 

 
0:13 
I'm Kendall Marlow with the Kemp Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect. 

 
0:18 
And today on this episode of Radio Camp, we're in for a treat. 

 
0:23 
I'm here today with you and with a very special colleague at the camp center that you're about to meet. 

 
0:29 
We all want the best for children and youth. 

 
0:32 
We may feel that there are things in life that they deserve, that young people even have a right to do. 

 
0:40 
Children and youth have rights. 

 
0:42 
And if they do, what does that mean for them and for us? 

 
0:47 
Let's go on a journey today to explore the answers to those questions. 

 
0:52 
Warren Binford is an international children's rights scholar and, among many other things, a professor of pediatric law, ethics and policy. 

 
1:03 
Warren, good to see you and thanks for being here. 

 
1:06 
Thank you, Kendall. 

 
1:07 
Warren, you're involved today in a range of issues, from the plight of young people at the border to the online exploitation of kids through social media platforms. 

 
1:20 
I spend much of my time advocating for the well-being of children in America's child welfare system. 

 
1:28 
I'd offer that I think we're both caught up in these current issues that feel very timely and fresh. 

 
1:36 
But I've learned from you that our journey on the rights of children begins in 1924. 

 
1:45 
A hundred years ago, someone climbed a mountain in France near Geneva, Switzerland. 

 
1:54 
Who was that person and what did they do? 

 
1:58 
So, so basically the person that you're talking about, Kendall, was Eglinton Jeb. 

 
2:03 
And Eglinton Jeb was a a British school teacher who became involved in providing relief to children who were affected by the war, first in Macedonia and then in World War 1. 

 
2:17 
And at the time, people thought that she was a heretic, that that she had betrayed Britain because of her desire to provide clothing and food to starving children in the aftermath of these wars, because people viewed the children of the enemy as the enemy themselves. 

 
2:37 
And Eglantine Jeb tried to reframe our understanding of children not as extension of their parents, but as human beings in their own right. 

 
2:46 
And in her advocacy effort, she and a moment of passion. 

 
2:49 
And she was a very passionate woman. 

 
2:51 
She founded Save the Children International. 

 
2:54 
She did indeed climb to the top of Mt Seleve over Geneva, where she wrote the first international legal instrument in the 20th century. 

 
3:04 
It it was the 1924 Declaration on the Rights of Child and it had five basic articles. 

 
3:10 
And and that was the person who really gave rise not just to the international recognition of children, right, but in fact, the entire international human rights movement in the 20th century. 

 
3:23 
Did that have an immediate impact or, or did this, did this advance down a down a road? 

 
3:30 
What happened? 

 
3:32 
Well, I mean, yes and no. 

 
3:34 
On the one hand, you know, part of what we try and accomplish in advocacy is reframing the way that we view things or view people the way that we understand problems. 

 
3:47 
And in in the 1920s, this was a new concept to a lot of people that children were individuals with their own individual rights. 

 
3:56 
But as I said, it was adopted by the League of Nations, which was the international organization that was formed after World War One to make sure that we never had another World War again. 

 
4:09 
The Declaration didn't change the world overnight, and in fact, the League of Nations felt compelled to reiterate their support for the Declaration on the Rights of Child in the 1930s because of not enough progress was being made. 

 
4:26 
Of course we know that famously there was another World War a few years later, World War 2, and that 1.5 million children were killed in the Holocaust. 

 
4:37 
And that was in addition to other children who who died during World War 2. 

 
4:41 
And so it certainly didn't have the immediate effect that we would have hoped to see. 

 
4:47 
But in fact, after World War Two, we renewed this commitment to children's rights and have continued to try and advance them to this day. 

 
4:55 
But that was not renewed through the League of Nations, was it? 

 
5:00 
Well, no, of course not. 

 
5:01 
I mean, we all know that, of course, the League of Nations was disbanded after World War 2 because it hadn't accomplished its goal of creating World Peace. 

 
5:10 
And in its stead, the United Nations was formed after World War 2. 

 
5:14 
And the United Nations, when it was first formed, identified children's rights as being one of its top priorities immediately after formation. 

 
5:23 
Of course, what we know is that the 1924 Declaration on the Right, so child was an aspirational instrument. 

 
5:31 
It was something that countries around the world committed to, you know, pursuing these ideals, working towards these ideals. 

 
5:39 
And after the League of Nations was disbanded and the United Nations was formed, the United Nations tried repeatedly to move forward with a binding legal instrument of binding treaty that would hold countries, you know, that are members of the UN to enforce children's rights. 

 
5:58 
But they weren't able to do that. 

 
5:59 
And so it wasn't until 1959 that the UN was able to adopt A declaration on the right as a child. 

 
6:06 
But like that 1924 declaration, it wasn't an enforceable treaty but an aspirational document. 

 
6:13 
It did expand, though, significantly on the children's rights that were recognized in that declaration. 

 
6:19 
So even though it hadn't reached the level of enforcement, it did have an expanded understanding of who children are and what their rights are. 

 
6:27 
So we did make progress between 1924 and 1959. 

 
6:32 
So that's 1959. 

 
6:35 
I think it's reasonable for folks to assume that this assertion of rights of children was based on a broader understanding of the rights of people generally, that we would have started with the rights of people and then realized at some .0 kids need some special consideration. 

 
6:55 
Is that what happened? 

 
6:57 
No, I mean, and, and that's, that's one of the reasons why I try and talk about children's rights so often is that in in fact the UN declaration, the, the UN declarations and and treaties that recognized human rights internationally across the mid 20th to late 20th century. 

 
7:18 
Those were not the beginning of human rights, the beginning of human rights internationally really was that 1924 declaration. 

 
7:27 
That's the first international instrument on record of any global organization that recognized any form of human rights. 

 
7:35 
And it, in fact, started with the child. 

 
7:37 
The children were not an afterthought. 

 
7:39 
It's not that we recognized human rights and then said, oh, here's a subgroup of humans. 

 
7:42 
No, it started with the recognition that children are so unique and they are so holy, if you will, that we really do need to give them the best that we have to offer and set them up for success across life. 

 
7:55 
Isn't it that we actually, let's say, I guess let's give the global society some credit, We in a way, we started with kids. 

 
8:04 
Yeah, we did. 

 
8:05 
And I, you know, and I don't want people to, to think that we don't understand the, the domestic construction of human rights as well. 

 
8:12 
There of course, was the the Cirrus cylinder in 539 BC where, you know, the, the Persian conquest of Babylon was really the 1st domestic document that we saw at kind of more of a national level that recognized human rights. 

 
8:31 
And then, of course, most famously was the Magna Carta and 12:15 AD where we, you know, had King John as part of a peace agreement, recognize that other people had rights too, including the rebel barons had who had, you know, risen up against him in England. 

 
8:47 
And then, of course, we try and hold our own country out, you know, the United States of America by pointing to the Declaration of Independence in 1776. 

 
8:55 
And of course, the Articles of Confederation in 77, which failed and had to be rewritten as the, you know, modern US Constitution, which was adopted in 1789. 

 
9:05 
And so you had this idea of recognizing that people had rights within individual countries and and individual populations that were, you know, sometimes limited by property or sex, etcetera. 

 
9:20 
But on the international stage, it really does begin with this climb to the top of Mount Celeb by Eglantine Jeb in 1924. 

 
9:29 
When you look at it from an international framework and then take us forward then the UN and the international context from 1959. 

 
9:41 
What happened from there? 

 
9:43 
Well, as you pointed out with one of your questions earlier when asking, so once these children's rights were recognized by the League of Nations, did it make an impact? 

 
9:52 
And a lot of people were frustrated, Kendall, that neither the 1924 Declaration nor the 1959 UN Declaration were making the difference that they hoped that they that would. 

 
10:04 
And so if you looked at many aspects of of children's lives, especially with regard to growing inequality and poverty and and child victims of war, that child advocates were convinced that war needed to be done, that we really needed an enforceable treaty. 

 
10:22 
And and so they organized a recognition of an entire year devoted to children. 

 
10:29 
The 1979 became the year of the child. 

 
10:31 
And it was in that year that the that a drafting group of countries from around the world started to meet in order to come up with an enforceable treaty that would recognize robustly children's rights. 

 
10:47 
And that that treaty was eventually adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989. 

 
10:53 
And it was ratified more quickly than any other human rights treaty up up until that point. 

 
11:00 
And so we we finally had an enforceable treaty, but not necessarily in the way that that some people had hoped. 

 
11:10 
And did every nation quickly sign on to that? 

 
11:14 
Did they need to sign on to it? 

 
11:16 
Did they need to formally adopt it or ratify it in some form? 

 
11:21 
You're talking about very widespread support. 

 
11:24 
Was that true all around the globe? 

 
11:27 
So yes and no. 

 
11:29 
So different, you know, as you know as a lawyer that different countries have a different ratification process. 

 
11:36 
So some countries just by virtue of signing a treaty, it becomes ratified. 

 
11:42 
Other, other countries such as the US require actually multiple steps to ratify the treaty. 

 
11:49 
And so we we did have the treaty being signed rapidly by countries all around the world. 

 
11:56 
But one of the most surprising things that happened is that the US, which contributed more content to that treaty and made more revisions to the content submitted by other drafting countries, that when it came time to sign the treaty, that the US president did not sign it. 

 
12:16 
It had been, you know, but the idea had been formulated under President Carter. 

 
12:22 
It had been drafted under President Reagan. 

 
12:25 
And then you know, it, it, it was introduced under the first President Bush. 

 
12:31 
And then when it came time to sign it, neither the 1st President Bush nor President Clinton was willing to sign it. 

 
12:38 
And it wasn't until the the the head of UNICEF on his dying bed asked President Clinton to please that his dying wish was that the US would would sign this treaty and ratify it. 

 
12:52 
And in fact, President Clinton did go on to finally sign it. 

 
12:56 
But it has yet to be ratified in the United States. 

 
12:59 
In the meanwhile, it has been ratified by every country in the world recognized by the UN except the US, and this includes North Korea, This includes Iran. 

 
13:09 
This includes South Sudan, which, you know, has only formed about 10 years ago. 

 
13:14 
This, of course, includes Somalia, which did not have a functioning government until a few years ago. 

 
13:19 
And so at this point, the US stands alone and not having ratified the treaty, but because we've signed the treaty, arguably we do have some legal obligations to not do anything to undermine the treaty. 

 
13:32 
And morally, because our fingerprints are all over the treaty, I think that we have an obligation to stand by the treaty. 

 
13:40 
Why I, I've got to think our, some of our listeners are wondering. 

 
13:44 
We like to think of the United States as a relatively progressive place in terms of how we treat each other. 

 
13:52 
I'm sure there's more than one reason. 

 
13:54 
But why were we slow to sign it? 

 
13:57 
Why have we still not ratify it? 

 
14:01 
Yeah. 

 
14:01 
You know, I, I wish I knew, Kendall, because if I understood this, then I, you know, then I would have, I'd, I'd have the ability to develop a strategy to try and counter that. 

 
14:12 
The reasons that are most often given include that people think that this infringes on the rights of parents when it really doesn't. 

 
14:21 
This is not an obligation on parents. 

 
14:25 
It's an obligation on the state's parties on the government's to respect children's rights and to pass laws that comply with children's rights. 

 
14:34 
And so, and, and frankly, when you look at the substance of our laws compared to a lot of other countries that are parties to the treaty, our laws are more, you know, consistent and parallel with what the treaty provides than many other countries. 

 
14:52 
And, and so it really is frustrating. 

 
14:54 
I mean, one, one thing that I was told was a reason is because the, you know, there's a process in the Senate that is required for ratification. 

 
15:04 
And I was told that right now the committee is next in line in the human rights category is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. 

 
15:15 
And they said once that's ratified, you know, approved for ratification, then we can turn to the UN Convention. 

 
15:21 
So based upon that explanation, I think we can't hold our breath. 

 
15:25 
But unfortunately, I think that this really is, you know, an it it, it's part of that politicization of children that we're we're seeing and not wanting to really, you know, recognize the inherent humanity of children in our country, you know, and, and so using them as kind of like a political football, unfortunately, and then making parents feel like somehow this convention would change something in the United States or would change their ability to discipline their children, for example, when that that's simply not what it does. 

 
16:00 
But that's what politicians or telling their constituents as an excuse for why we haven't ratified it. 

 
16:06 
But it's, you know, it's, it's one of the most disappointing things in my mind that the the US has failed to do. 

 
16:14 
It's not ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

 
16:17 
However, we have ratified some of the follow on treaties, the protocol to the Convention on the rights, rights of the Child. 

 
16:25 
And I am very proud of the United States for for signing those treaties before we get to those protocols. 

 
16:33 
So if the US was important in contributing to what the convention the treaty provides, talk to us. 

 
16:44 
What does it provide? 

 
16:47 
Well, basically the, the, the treaty is is built upon 4 principles. 

 
16:53 
The principles are non discrimination, which is a core American value. 

 
16:58 
You know, there is the inherent right to survival and development. 

 
17:02 
There is the the principle of the best interests of the child that when we're making decisions about children, we need to, you know, focus on their best interests. 

 
17:10 
And then there are rights of participation. 

 
17:12 
And these rights of participation include access to knowledge, freedom of expression and freedom of association. 

 
17:20 
And then, you know, within the construct, particularly of participation, we frame it within an evolving right, an evolving capacity of the child model, which basically says that as children become older and more capable, we want to give them more and more individual responsibility, more and more agency. 

 
17:40 
So that by the time they reach 18 years of age, which is, you know, the, the, the age of legal adulthood in the United States, that they're prepared to enter into society with capacity for full political, social and economic participation. 

 
17:55 
And so it, it's framed around that, you know, those four principles. 

 
17:59 
And then the, the convention, the treaty is organized around 3 areas thematically, and those include rights to protection, rights to provision and rights to participation. 

 
18:13 
And you mentioned them. 

 
18:14 
So that sounds very broad. 

 
18:15 
It sounds comprehensive. 

 
18:17 
What was the need for additional protocols to accompany that? 

 
18:23 
So, so there were two areas that that were particularly controversial and one was really about children's participation in armed conflict. 

 
18:35 
I came into children's rights through through two formative experiences as as a adolescent and then young adult. 

 
18:44 
One one was working in inner city Los Angeles and seeing the disparities between, you know, children in the suburbs and children in the inner city in Los Angeles. 

 
18:54 
And, and the other one was going to the former Yugoslavia during the war and, and doing some work with the International Red Cross and the Croatian Red Cross there. 

 
19:04 
And the fact is that armed conflict and war is just one of the most painful things you can ever imagine. 

 
19:13 
And and yet at the same time, we send young people, including children, into war as combatants. 

 
19:22 
And the fact that many countries wanted to be able to, wanted to be able to send children in into war. 

 
19:30 
And they at least wanted to, to, you know, even if they weren't in combat roles, they, they, they wanted to train them for war under the age of 18. 

 
19:39 
That the drafting parties decided to remove all of the issues around children in armed conflict into a separate treaty. 

 
19:48 
And that became the first optional protocol. 

 
19:51 
And that focuses on, you know, the rights of children in armed conflict. 

 
19:54 
So basically, you know, child soldiers and other victims of war. 

 
19:57 
And that was how we were able to kind of keep this universal. 

 
20:02 
Coalition together around the parent treaty that UN Convention on the Rights of Child, while also allowing countries to focus on when they wanted to recruit children when they wanted to allow them to enter into armed conflict at what age the US was particularly interested in its high school ROTC program. 

 
20:22 
So that was EU s s main interest on on this topic as as as well as you know, recruiting children, recruiting people under the age of 18, IE children for non combat roles in our in our military. 

 
20:36 
And so that's what gave rise to the first area, which was covered by the 1st optional protocol. 

 
20:42 
The 2nd optional protocol is, is one that's also very near and dear to my heart, which is it focuses on the sale of children, child prostitution, which we now call child trafficking, and child *********** which we now refer to as child sex abuse material. 

 
20:57 
And, and, and that protocol ended up being ratified and entering into power even more quickly than the parent treaty was, you know, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

 
21:09 
So those were the first two optional protocols. 

 
21:12 
And then there was a third optional protocol that, that came along about 10 years ago. 

 
21:15 
And, and what was that one concerning? 

 
21:19 
Well, so you know, I talked earlier about, you know, no enforcement mechanism with the aspirational declarations. 

 
21:25 
We, we just basically said, these are principles that this is what we're going to work to towards. 

 
21:30 
And, and, and people weren't happy with that. 

 
21:33 
They wanted something that was enforceable. 

 
21:35 
But when they actually sat down over this 10 year period of 1979 to 1989 and started drafting the treaty, what they found is that in order to get the UN Convention adopted universally, it needed to be reporting treaty. 

 
21:54 
There couldn't be any enforcement mechanisms. 

 
21:56 
So under a lot of human rights treaties, there is some sort of like tribunal or committee that you can take your human rights complaints to and they can issue rulings against the country which is violating your human rights. 

 
22:10 
And what the drafting, you know, parties found is that if they included something similar and the UN Convention that they wouldn't get enough parties to ratify it, states parties to ratify it. 

 
22:21 
And So what they ended up doing instead is make it a reporting treaty so that parties to the treaty tell the Committee on the Rights of Child, which was formed under the 1989 treaty, if they tell them on a regular basis what they're doing to implement their obligations, to satisfy their obligations under the treaty. 

 
22:42 
And it also allows, you know, private actors and nonprofits, NGOs to submit shadow reports that say, yes, the US is, is respecting children's rights or no, they're not, you know, whatever the party is that they're reporting on, you know, under one of these treaties. 

 
23:00 
But people weren't really satisfied with that, the treaty becoming a reporting treaty and still not having a a committee or a tribunal who could hear complaints of children's rights violations. 

 
23:11 
So children's advocates lobbied long and hard for a, a committee to be formed to hear complaints. 

 
23:18 
And in fact, you know, that that became the Third optional Protocol, which is called the communications procedure. 

 
23:25 
And it essentially set up a committee to hear children's complaints about countries that were parties to both the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child or the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as that Third Optional Protocol. 

 
23:39 
So they would have to ratify, you know, both of those treaties to be obligated under under this enforcement mechanism. 

 
23:46 
And those children and their advocates can bring specific complaints on behalf of individual children before a subcommittee of this UN Committee on the Rights of the Child that sits in Geneva. 

 
23:57 
And the UN, you know, this communications committee has been hearing dozens of complaints and has been creating a whole body of law now around children's rights that helped to set precedent internationally for, you know, how to enforce children's rights under these these treaty and how these rights that are expanded in these forty articles that make up the 1989 convention. 

 
24:21 
How those to be interpreted by countries that want to comply with children, their children's rights obligations. 

 
24:27 
It's sounds like those legal structures and mechanisms are are very necessary things for all of this to have meaning. 

 
24:37 
But I also would love to hear you talk about something that appears in your writings that struck me as very human. 

 
24:46 
And that's a concept, if I understand it, from the continent of Africa called Ubuntu. 

 
24:53 
What is that? 

 
24:55 
Yeah. 

 
24:55 
So this is a concept that has been appearing in my life and my work for about 12 years now that I keep encountering. 

 
25:05 
And Ubuntu is a, a, a concept that's developed by some of the peoples in Southern Africa. 

 
25:11 
And it, it, it basically says I become me through you, that I am who I am because of you and how I treat you and how you and I interact with each other. 

 
25:24 
And so the idea is like, I go back. 

 
25:26 
The reason why this resonates with me as we celebrate 100 years of children's rights is, is that you will recall that in that 1924 declaration that Eglantine Jeb wrote, you know that mankind owes to the child the best that it has to give. 

 
25:44 
That is the process, that unbuntu process where we define ourselves by how we treat other people, how we interact with other people and recognize that that children give us the opportunity to be our best selves. 

 
25:57 
That when we are making sure that children are well cared for and their rights are being respected, that we are better people because of it. 

 
26:06 
And so it is that core concept that Edlund Tanjev wrote into the declaration on the right child at the top of Mount Celeb. 

 
26:15 
And it was interesting because I I first came across this concept in 2012 when I went to South Africa because after apartheid fell, a constitution was drafted around the same time that the convention on the right. 

 
26:32 
So a child was garnering the signatures that it needed to take effect. 

 
26:36 
And the drafters of the South African Constitution following the fall of apartheid wrote all of these children's rights into the constitution. 

 
26:45 
It become the most advanced constitution in the world with regard to children's rights. 

 
26:49 
And so I wanted to go there and study how they were doing it, implementing the rights that they had adopted and integrated into their national constitution. 

 
26:58 
And, and that's when I first learned about Ubuntu. 

 
27:02 
And, and then I came back to the United States, you know, a few years later, and I encountered Gary Melton, who was a professor at the Kemp Center and had been writing about children's rights for years. 

 
27:15 
And I found out that one of his favorite philosophies was Ubuntu. 

 
27:20 
That, you know, we become, I become me through you, that the way that I interact with you, the way that I interact with children, the way that I, you know, serve children, treat them, respect their rights, that that ends up defining me. 

 
27:33 
And Gary Melton was one of the reasons I first came to the Camp Center. 

 
27:37 
And sadly, he passed away shortly after I arrived. 

 
27:40 
And so we never had the opportunity to, to work together. 

 
27:43 
But I actually had originally written this essay that's coming out this year in his honor because his his children's rights work dating back to the 20th century has has always been inspirational for me. 

 
27:56 
And then to find out that he had the same resonance with Ubuntu was very inspiring to me. 

 
28:02 
It's like, OK, this is not something that I'm making up. 

 
28:04 
Ubuntu really is the spirit of Eglantyne Jeb and her vision for children and how the world should treat children 100 years ago, and it remains true today. 

 
28:15 
And part of that spirit, that airing you mentioned before, things being dear to your heart, part of that part, as you know, is that we at the Kemp Center want to take the lessons that we've learned from all over the world and also make a difference in our own backyard. 

 
28:39 
We have talked and we are working on, as an expression of that, making Colorado a model state for kids in any way that we can and to bring us now from this broader perspective into the world of child welfare. 

 
29:00 
Our society's response to child abuse and neglect. 

 
29:06 
I'm very happy, Warren, as you know, to share that we're making some progress on that front as well in the state of Colorado. 

 
29:17 
And as we try to advance the well-being and the interests and the rights of children and youth in Colorado as well as across the country, we've made some interesting progress in very recent times. 

 
29:33 
Here in the state of Colorado. 

 
29:36 
There are currently actually two bills that are not yet law, but that appear to be on their way to becoming law. 

 
29:46 
We're happy to say one is a kind of Bill of Rights for youth who may be in facilities because they are a part of the state's juvenile justice system. 

 
30:01 
And so trying to express and make real the rights of kids in juvenile justice to be free of harm, to receive education and health care and things of that sort. 

 
30:13 
But I'd like us to talk a bit about another bill which is being phrased as a Bill of Rights for youth in foster care. 

 
30:25 
Although it's not just youth, Warren, as you know, it's kids of all ages, children and youth. 

 
30:32 
And would you agree it's an attempt by us, isn't it, to make those things real right where we are? 

 
30:41 
Well, absolutely, you know, and that really is the obligation of countries that become a member, you know, or become a party to this convention is that you're basically saying, yes, I believe in these principles and we will go ahead and translate these into domestic laws. 

 
31:01 
And in the United States, of course, as we know, you know, family law and child welfare, that those are laws that are created at the state level, which means that if we want to change the laws so that they're consistent, you know, with this universal recognition of children's rights, that we need to be acting at the state and local levels. 

 
31:23 
So we want to make sure that we're we are, you know, empowering parents to be able to provide adequately for their children. 

 
31:31 
Like the UN Convention is not intended to say, OK, we're going to set up Aun distribution center in every state and every community. 

 
31:40 
It's like, no, you need to support parents so that they can provide for their children. 

 
31:45 
You know, if if children are being hurt, that it only then and the parents that are are hurting their children, if they're abusing their children, only then should children be taken away from their parents. 

 
31:54 
And even when that happens, you still have to respect children's rights and if they're in protective custody. 

 
32:01 
And those rights, of course, include the right to participation, which we talked about earlier. 

 
32:06 
So that means that with the judge, the Trier of fact, they need to hear from the child, they need to hear what the child wants. 

 
32:13 
It doesn't mean that the judge has to do with the child wants, but it absolutely means that the judge needs to hear what it is that the child wants in addition to thinking about what is in the child's best interest. 

 
32:25 
And throughout that process, it's not just the right to participation that children have. 

 
32:30 
It is exactly those rights that you're talking about moving through the Colorado legislature right now, which is the child's right to to to education, etcetera. 

 
32:40 
And we need to make sure that, you know, it doesn't matter where the child is, whether they are with their parents or they're with kin, extended family members, or if they are in, you know, protective custody of the state or even in the juvenile justice system, that, you know, children still have inherent rights. 

 
33:00 
They have all the rights that human beings have. 

 
33:02 
And then they have special rights due to their status as children. 

 
33:06 
And they don't lose those rights just because they are in the child welfare system or, you know, and any other system that there are very limited circumstances in, in which we are able to reduce children's rights and not realize them. 

 
33:22 
And, and it's important for us not to lose sight of that when and we do have feel compelled to intervene in in a an abuse situation because they've got some kids have got some in, in layman's terms, you know, a lawyer might say coexisting rights in in layman's terms, wouldn't you think a kid has a right to a family and to be with their family, but they also have a right to be free from harm, right. 

 
33:49 
Exactly. 

 
33:50 
And, and you know, and this is what we have to balance is, is that, you know, if, if a child can't be with their parents, you know, either because the parents, you know, pass away or become incapacitated, or because the parents are, are abusive or are exploiting their children. 

 
34:08 
You know that, you know, the child has these rights of protection that coexist with their family rights, their rights to be, you know, to be with their parents. 

 
34:19 
And so we need to do our best to uphold children's rights regardless of where they are. 

 
34:27 
Those rights in that bill in Colorado to help folks understand are are wide-ranging things like freedom from discrimination, freedom of thought, conscience, cultural and ethnic practice, freedom to express their gender identity, but then also rights, freedom from harm, freedom from abuse. 

 
34:51 
And I just want to take a moment to thank very broad support in Colorado from a a wide range of good folks who have come together to advance that foster youth Bill of Rights. 

 
35:07 
And again, ultimately our aim to make Colorado a model state here. 

 
35:19 
When we then try to do that in our own state, we're also trying to spread this good work around the country. 

 
35:28 
And Warren, I I'd love it for you to talk just a bit about some opportunities that are coming up this fall. 

 
35:37 
I'm going to give everybody a website address real quick here. 

 
35:41 
www.ctaconference dot org. 

 
35:47 
That's www.ctaconference.org. 

 
35:52 
CTA stands for Call to Action. 

 
35:57 
And is there a role, is there a place for this discussion of children's rights in that conference this fall? 

 
36:06 
Oh, absolutely. 

 
36:07 
So one of the things that we've been able to negotiate with the conference organizers is to include children's rights is a theme of this year's conference in light of the 100th anniversary of the 1924 Declaration on the Rights of a Child. 

 
36:21 
And so we have an entire track that we're trying to organize around children's rights. 

 
36:27 
This includes, you know, children's rights to participation in the child welfare context. 

 
36:32 
It includes panels both on children's rights domestically and internationally. 

 
36:37 
You know, we have a panel that's being organized around empowering children's participation and court proceedings, the rights of LGBTQIA plus children, the rights of Indigenous children. 

 
36:49 
And of course, anyone is free to submit a conference or a panel proposal or a session proposal to the conference. 

 
36:59 
My understanding is that the proposals deadline is currently April 26th. 

 
37:03 
So I encourage folks to move quickly and submit their proposals at at that website. 

 
37:08 
But even if someone doesn't want to organize a session themselves on children's rights, they certainly, if they're interested in this topic, should register for the conference and attend and join the discussions around children's rights in October. 

 
37:23 
So we call that the Call to Action Conference. 

 
37:26 
And again, whether folks might want to meet that tight deadline for submitting a proposal, which we'd encourage you to do, or whether it's just a bit down the line you'd like to attend and you want to register for the conference, it's www.ctaconference.org. 

 
37:45 
And Warren, I wonder if you could share. 

 
37:49 
It's called the Call to Action Conference. 

 
37:53 
You're speaking now to a broad audience. 

 
37:57 
We're we're proud to say that this conference and the audience of the Kemp is in fact international. 

 
38:07 
And we've got a multidisciplinary community of people in all kinds of different roles around the globe that are trying to do their best for kids and families and advance these rights in their own way. 

 
38:22 
But it's called a call to action. 

 
38:25 
And Warren, as you're speaking to that audience today, what's your call to action to all of us? 

 
38:33 
I think my call to action to everyone is to stop and look and listen to the children all around you. 

 
38:43 
They are everywhere. 

 
38:44 
You know, they are over 40% of our population in the United States, and they are our future. 

 
38:49 
And it's so critically important for us to recognize the inherent dignity and individuality of those children and to do everything that we can to see those children, to listen to them, to uplift them, that our children are in crisis today, that they are not being seen, they are not being heard. 

 
39:09 
Everybody's walking around looking at their phones and, you know, addicted to digital technologies. 

 
39:14 
And we're not really giving the children that that serve and return, you know, that that flow of love back and forth, whether you know, it's a neighbor child or your own child or your grand grandchild, etcetera. 

 
39:27 
And so in seeing children and recognizing them, which is what Eglantyne Jeb did, that she didn't just see children as an extension of the enemy. 

 
39:36 
She saw them as individuals in their own right. 

 
39:38 
That I think it's critically important for all of us to see children, to honor them, to put down our phones, to stop the distractions and to express, you know, the the respect that we have for that individual child and their inherent humanity, which is in fact given rise to our entire human rights, you know, framework today. 

 
40:02 
We have so much to owe children and you know, and like I say, they are our future. 

 
40:07 
So my call to action is really for us to, you know, stop and see children and to make sure that we give them the best that we have to give. 

 
40:15 
And in doing so, through that Ubuntu process, they will help us to become our best selves. 

 
40:21 
Thank you, Warren, thank you. 

 
40:24 
Thank you, Kendall, and thanks to our listeners. 

 
40:28 
One more time, that website for the coming conferences, www.ctaconference.org. 

 
40:36 
Thank you to all of you for joining us today. 

 
40:40 
Be with us again soon. 

 
40:43 
Join us again soon. 

 
40:45 
This has been Radio Chem.