Publications

This publication was jointly developed by the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre (IRC) and the Government of the Netherlands. It includes a background document prepared by IRC and summarizes the discussions and outcomes of the International Conference on Violence against the Girl Child held in The Hague from 9-10 March 2009. The conference addressed gaps in knowledge, research and responses to violence against girls in the home and family, and was a follow-up to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children.

Even though all South Asian countries have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, there is as yet little awareness in the region of the importance of this Convention at various levels including policy planning, activism and legal reform in the on-going effort to achieve children’s rights. Thus argues Savitri Goonesekere, whose primary objective in this book is to outline the options available for using the Convention to create a legal system favourable to the realization of the rights of the child in South Asia. The first chapters discuss the international legal environment and the assumptions underlying South Asian domestic legislation on children’s rights, together with the conceptual framework of the Convention. The core of the book focuses on ‘best interests’ and examines such issues as trafficking in children, the status of the girl child, adoption and foster care, child prostitution, and the child as victim of abuse and violence.