Universal Children’s Day

What the day is

Universal Children's Day is observed on November 20. The United Nations General Assembly recommended it in 1954, asking member states to establish a day promoting the welfare of children and understanding between them.

Origin and background

The date was not arbitrary, and it gathered weight over time. On November 20, 1959, the General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Thirty years later to the day, in 1989, it adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which turned those principles into binding obligations on the states that ratified it.

The Convention is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in existence. The United States signed it in 1995 and has never ratified it, which leaves it the only UN member state outside the agreement. The objections raised have centered on parental authority and national sovereignty rather than on the substance of children's welfare.

The treaty's actual content is more concrete than the title suggests: a right to be registered at birth and hold a nationality, protection from economic exploitation and from military recruitment, access to education and health care, and a requirement that children be heard in decisions that affect them.

Observance dates vary widely, which regularly confuses people looking it up. Many countries have marked June 1 since 1950, a date originating with a 1949 congress in Moscow. India observes November 14, Nehru's birthday. Japan's Children's Day falls on May 5 and long predates any of it. November 20 is a UN recommendation, not a global standard.

How to take part

• Read the Convention. It is short, plainly written, and most adults have never seen it.
• Support an organization working on child welfare, locally or internationally.
• Ask a child what they think about something that affects them, and take the answer seriously.
• Find out which date your own country observes, and why it differs from this one.
• Schools can use it to introduce the idea of rights in age-appropriate terms.