THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN

Taranaki Daily News, 15 January 1931, Page 5

THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN

DECLARATION OF GENEVA. INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENT. A copy of the Declaration of Geneva the declaration of the rights of the child—is shortly to be deposited at the international headquarters of the Save the Children Movement in Geneva. One of the signatories is the Rt. Hon. G. W- Forbes, Prime Minister of New Zealand. The signatures were appended to the deblaration on the invitation of Lord Noel Buxton, the president of the Save the Children Fund, and it is believed that\on no other non-official document do they thus all appear together. They are the names of. six Prime Ministers of the British Commonwealth —of ‘ Great Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Newfoundland —and two other statesmen of hiah degree, representing respectively the Irish Free State and the Indian Empire. In 1924 the Assembly of the League of Nations approved the declaration, the. President, M. Guiseppe Motta, a former President of the Helvetic Confederation, remarking that in so doing the Assembly had made it the League s charter of child welfare. ■ _ The terms of the declaration read: Bt the present declaration of the rights of the child, commonly known as the Declaration of Geneva, men and women of all nations, recognising that mankind owes to the child the best that it has to give, declare and accept it as their duty that; beyond and above all consideration of race, nationality, or creed: — X . 1. The child should be given tne means needed for its normal development, both materially and spiritually. 2. The child that is hungry should be fed; the child that'is sick should nursed; the child that is backward should be helped; the erring child should be reclaimed; and the orphan and the waif should be sheltered and succoured. . 3. The child should be the first to receive relief in times .of distress. 4. The child should be put in a position to earn a livelihood, and -.honld be protected against every form of exploitation. 5. The child should be brought up Ji. the consciousness that its talents, arc to be need in the service of its fellow men. *• 41 In Geneva, this unique copy ot rue declaration will tike its place side by side with others exemplifying the adhesion of high dignitaries of State in other lands to the principles which if sets forth —the Hungarian version which was sign’d with so great solemnity by ' the Cardinal-Arch-bishop, the Anhduke Albrecht, and ’others; the Bulgarian, sign-, eo by King. Boris; the Erse version, bearino- tlie signatures of both the ’ President of the Irish Free State and the Republican leader, Earnon de Val- ' era- the Austrian, French, Swedish, Finnish, Latvian versions, and many ' others.