第74回国連総会第3委員会 議題66(a, b)「児童の権利」に関する宮崎あかね政府代表顧問によるステートメント
令和元年10月8日
(As delivered)
Mr. Chair,
I would like to join other colleagues to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child – a comprehensive set of international human rights instruments for the protection and well-being of children. As a representative of Japan, I wish to express our renewed, unwavering commitment to the promotion and protection of the rights of children. Japan will continue to take necessary measures to create a better and safer society for children.
Mr. Chair,
For Japan, the year 2019 bears additional significance: it marks the 25th anniversary since Japan ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. On this momentous occasion, Japan announced a pledge to fulfill the obligations stipulated in the Convention, as invited by the Committee on the Rights of the Child. We also joined the “the global pledge: for every child, every right”, upon the invitation of the Group of Friends of Children and the SDGs and in alignment with UNICEF’s global campaign.
Mr. Chair,
Last year, I mentioned our commitments to the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children (GPeVAC) made at the Stockholm Solutions Summit in 2018. This year, I am proud to highlight some of the achievements we have made since then:
Japan, together with civil society, has made concrete steps toward formulating a National Action Plan to end violence against children. I would particularly like to stress our child-oriented, participatory approach. Not only did Japan have productive, multi-stakeholder meetings to discuss the Action Plan, it also invited children in Japan to express their opinions online so as to take into consideration their opinions during the drafting process of the Action Plan. Japan will continue its efforts to formulate the Action Plan toward 2020.
In addition, against the backdrop of an increase in the number of child abuse reports in Japan in recent years, and following the latest recommendations by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in February 2019, Japan enacted a law to amend the Child Welfare Act and other relevant laws in June 2019 to strengthen measures to prevent child abuse and clearly prohibit corporal punishment. With a view to further protecting the rights of children, Japan will continue to implement these measures in addition to other initiatives in force, including the 2017 Basic Plan on Measures against Child Sexual Exploitation.
Mr. Chair,
Japan also intends to end violence against children abroad. As I noted last year, we made a contribution of 5.9 million US Dollars to the End Violence Fund, the associated fund of GPeVAC. Our contribution, which has supported 12 humanitarian projects in Uganda and Nigeria, expedited efforts to release over 1,900 children from armed groups in Nigeria. Given these positive results, Japan encourages other partners, including pathfinding countries, to help expand the humanitarian window of the fund to end violence against children affected by conflicts.
Mr. Chair,
Japan is determined to make every effort to help achieve SDG target 16.2 in order to build a better world where every child can grow up in a violence-free environment and have hopes and dreams for the future. We would like to do so by working shoulder-to-shoulder with civil society and in close collaboration with the international community, including the United Nations and other Member States.
I thank you.