Children and Adolescents’ Rights. Social Participation of Children and Adolescents, Towards Their Incorporation to Active Citizenship

Abstract

Let’s pause for a moment on the path towards Human Rights and pay attention to whatchildren and adolescents have to say. Hearing them is not enough; we need to take theminto account and grant paramount consideration to their opinion and participationwherever their interests are involved. It concerns us all.The scope and significance of their vindications was made clear in the Gran Documentoproduced in Venezuela, as well as in the Lima Declaration, presented at the closing of the IIWorld Congress on Children and Adolescents’ Rights, held in November 2005.

The dynamism of a world in constant evolution cannot be qualified as progressunless it allows the social participation of children and adolescents. It is not enough torespect their active citizenship; it needs to be guaranteed, for the full completion of theirrights, which have been universally recognised and agreed, as proven by the fact that theConvention on the Rights of the Child has been almost unanimously ratified.The III World Congress on Children and Adolescents’ Rights, to take place inBarcelona, 14 to 19 November 2007, finds its starting point in the statements made bychildren and adolescents in the 2003 and 2005 Declarations, we intend to analyse and offersolutions to the worries and questions that the present reality of children and adolescentsposes. Our ultimate goal is to set guidelines towards attaining «a world fit for children», sothat we may all be committed to it, since this is the world that the whole of society needs.