WORK by countries, including Jamaica, to implement the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) is to be put under the microscope, director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Innocenti Research Centre in Italy, Marta Santos Pias, revealed on Tuesday.

Santos Pias, who was speaking at the opening of the two-day Caribbean Child Research Conference at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston, explained that the initiative was being undertaken because there was limited data as to how children have benefited from the implementation of the convention globally.

“That is why we decided to do a global study on assessing the process of implementation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child to understand what are the new measures adopted in that country.(to see if there are) any new policies, any new institutions that are set up,” she said. “But also to understand what is different for children today that was not the case 18 years ago, and we wish for the opportunity to do that in the next five to 10 years.”

According to UNICEF, the CRC is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights – civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights as it relates to children. In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention just for them.

The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols, which spell out the basic human rights that children everywhere have which include the right to survival, to develop to the fullest, to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation.

Jamaica ratified the CRC in May 1999, committing itself to improve the conditions and status of children and to protect them from rights violations.

Nevertheless, Santos Pias said while people have become more aware of what works best when dealing with children and have begun to look at children in a different way, their needs are still not being met.

“In the context of globalisation and the very fast-changing world within which we live, we believe that children are not yet given sufficient attention,” she said. “In fact, we are not simply neglecting children, we are neglecting social problems in our society as a whole.”

A recent study, she added, indicated that one in four children in this region are growing up in poverty and that children are twice as likely to grow up in poverty as adults and the elderly.

However, Carol Samuels, former head of the Jamaica Coalition for the Rights of the Child is undaunted by the new initiative. She is confident that “Jamaica will look good” when the evaluation is done.

“It took 11 years to bring that piece of legislation (Child Care and Protection Act) into action…it is working and that makes us look good,” she told the Observer Tuesday.

“Also as a part of that piece of legislation is the establishment of an Office of the Children’s Advocate and it is up and running. Also the CDA is working and those are early recommendations to merge important agencies,” she added, admitting that there were still areas that needed to be addressed.