28th February 2012, Geneva;The Maldives today signed a new UN child protection treaty designed to allow children suffering abuse or mistreatment, or their representatives, to communicate with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to seek protection. The treaty was signed for the Maldives by H.E. Ms. Iruthisham Adam, Permanent Representative in Geneva.
The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (OPCRC) was negotiating and agreed by the Human Rights Council in June 2011 and was subsequently endorsed by the General Assembly. The Maldives played a key role in this process - chairing the original intergovernmental negotiations which took the decision to establish the new treaty. Subsequently, the Maldives has been part of the core group of States which negotiated the actual OPCRC, and secured its adoption at the Human Rights Council and General Assembly. It is therefore fitting that the Maldives has become one of the original signatories, joining 19 other States.
The signing ceremony took place during the 19th session of the Human Rights Council.
Speaking afterwards, Ambassador Adam said that children's rights is one of the Maldives' main priority issues as a member of the Council and that she is confident that the new OPCRC will help children in the Maldives and elsewhere to realise their fundamental rights and to secure redress for violations.
ENDS.