1. INTRODUCTION:

I have taken the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (the Convention) as the premise of considering the empowering of the International Court of Justice (the Court) so as to safeguard the future of the two billion children and generations yet to be born.

So, I will quickly go over the provisions of the Convention, their implementation and see whether the Court can be resorted to for implementation and if not what should be done.

2. THE CONVENTION:

About 40 rights for children and corresponding obligations on the part of the State Parties are set out in Articles 1 to 41 covering a wide range of subjects which are meant to set out an environment to enable every child to develop to its full potential. A child is defined as a human being under the age of 18 years unless the age of majority of the country in question is lower.1 The Convention applies to all children equally but with special protections for vulnerable groups like ethnic minorities. All rights are interconnected and are of equal importance.

The Convention enjoins States to implement the prescribed rights by enacting enabling legislations and taking the necessary administrative steps. Some State obligations are said to be absolute and immediate while others are qualified and progressive. they are absolute when the rights are not limited either by the resources available to the State or by reference to the means to be employed in performing them. Obligations are immediate when a State is bound to take the necessary steps to secure them from the moment the treaty comes into force for that State. Obligations are qualified when their implementation is subject to the resources available to the State Parties and to their appropriate means. Obligations are progressive when steps are to be taken or measures are to be adopted "with a view of achieving progressively the full realization" of the rights concerned. The Convention has categorized the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights as qualified and progressive.

There is the Committee on the Rights of the child to which State Parties are required to present reports on the measures they have adopted to give effect to the rights recognized and on the progress made on the enjoyment of those rights. The first report is submitted within two years after a State Party has ratified the Convention and thereafter reports have to be submitted every five years. It is palpably clear to me that these requirements are not satisfactory.

States Parties are required to publicize their reports in their own countries. The Committee, on the other hand, may make suggestions and general recommendations from the reports received which shall be transmitted to the State Party concerned and to the General Assembly. So the reports are pro-forma affairs and the Committee does not have teeth. Much is left to the State Party's good will and its determination of the progressive implementation of the economic, social and cultural rights.

3. THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE:

Can the Court be resorted to for the enforcement of the rights and obligations under the Convention?

The Court is created by the Charter of the United Nations (the Charter) and functions in accordance with the Statute of the International Court of Justice (the Statute). Every member of the UN is ipso facto party to the Statute and undertakes to comply with the decision of the Court in any case to which it is a party in the event of a failure to comply with the decision the other party may have recourse to the Security Council which may decide on the measures to be taken to implement the judgment.

However, only states have locus standi before the Court and so the Court has no jurisdiction to deal with applications form individuals, non- governmental organizations or corporation. Invariably a complainant under the convention would not be a state but an individual or a group of individuals or an NGO representing them but as already seen, these are denied locus standi.

Even then, the rights provided by the Convention are justiciable in the Court under Article 36 of the Statute which provides:

The jurisdiction of the Court comprises all cases which the parties refer to it and all matters specially provided for in the charter of the United Nations or in treaties and conventions in force. ( Emphasis supplied)

I submit that the Convention is covered by that Article except for the locus standi.

4. EMPOWERING THE COURT:

There is a need then of giving locus standi to individuals or a group of individuals or an NGO representing them. Nowadays we have what is called 'international justice, which had a shot in the arm in 2001 when Slobodan Milosevic was arrested under the order of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia( ICTY). Many states have ratified the instrument establishing the International Criminal Court and that has given added impetus to the cause of international justice.

There are also multilateral treaties which give individuals locus standi in the tribunals or courts formed under such treaties. A classic example is the Treaty for East African Co-operation (the Treaty)between Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The Treaty creates the East African Court of Justice (EACJ), which came into operation on 30th November 2001 with the initial jurisdiction of interpreting the Treaty which, among others, provides that:

…..any person who is a resident in a Partner state may refer for determination by the Court , the legality of any Act, regulation, direction, decision or action of a Partner State or an institution of the Community on the grounds that such Act, regulation, direction, decision or action is unlawful or is an infringement of the provisions of this treaty.

Thus both a natural and a legal person can access the EACJ. Only four references have been made to the EACJ since its inception and all of them by under this article and have been decided in favour of the natural or legal persons. Currently there is another reference pending before the EACJ filed by the East African law Society against the three Attorneys General of the three East African Countries challenging the amendments made to the Treaty.

5. CONCLUSION:

I submit that Article 34 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, which allows only States to be parties before it, should be amended to accommodate natural and legal persons to be parties in matters of enforcing the Convention. By so doing the Court will be empowered to safeguard the future of the two billion children and generations yet to be born.

The Convention on the Rights of a child safeguards the rights of the child who must first know of its existence. Then the child has to be assured that its own state will respect and implement the Convention and that there is an international authority which can compel the State to do so. In that way it will be inculcated in the mind of the child the duty to respect international law and that will ensure world peace.