A NEW CHILDREN’S ACT FOR SOUTH AFRICA: MAKING IT WORK FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

Authors

  • Roseline September Faculty of Community Health Sciences, University of the Western Cape, and Head of UNICEF, Cape Town.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15270/44-2-247

Abstract

Numerous civil society organisations as well as the National Children’s Rights Committee(NCRC) and UNICEF supported South Africa’s post-apartheid government to institutionalisechildren’s rights as a fundamental pillar of the new democracy. Towards this end, in 1995 thegovernment ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Child (1989) (the CRC). Drawing onthis international standard, children’s rights was enshrined in Section 28 of the SA Constitution(1996). Further to cover the particular vulnerabilities of African children, the government alsoratified the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (the ACRWC) in 2000.Collectively these instruments seek to ensure that children have a range of integrated political,civil, cultural and socio-economic rights. In addition to the general human rights to equality, abasic education and the right to dignity, children have additional socio-economic rights,including the right to family and parental care, or to appropriate alternative care when removedfrom their family setting; to basic nutrition, shelter, health care, social services and to beprotected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse and degradation. By ratifying the internationalchildren’s rights instruments and through its national constitutional provisions for children’srights, the SA government accepted an obligation to put in place mechanisms to realise theserights. However, the nation made these laudable commitments within a context of the hugeresource and capacity challenges required for their implementation.

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Published

2014-06-20

How to Cite

September, R. (2014). A NEW CHILDREN’S ACT FOR SOUTH AFRICA: MAKING IT WORK FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES. Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk, 44(2). https://doi.org/10.15270/44-2-247

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