The General Assembly of the United Nations calls upon all 192 Member countries who have ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (treaties and conventions and protocols), to publicize the text and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories."

What steps do the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Rights of the Child encourage governments to undertake?
Through its reviews of country reports, the Committee urges all levels of government to use the Convention as a guide in policy-making and implementation to:

• Raise awareness and disseminate information on the Convention by providing training to all those involved in government policy-making and working with or for children.
• Involve civil society—including children themselves—in the process of implementing and raising awareness of child rights.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)

Professor Philip Goulder

Pediatric Research Immunologist, HIV Infection & Immune Control Group, University of Oxford

We watch carefully the people who inspire us, and listen to the stories they tell us; what we learn from them shapes what we understand, how we feel and how we act in the world.

Professor Andrew Tomkins

Institute of Child Health, University College London

Art and poetry often communicate in deeper ways, reaching our inner lives to bring truth and realization. They also release new strength for respect, care and compassion

Professor Nigel Rollins

Maternal and child health, World Health Organisation (WHO) (formerly of University of KwaZulu-Natal Nelson R. Mandela Medical School) (extract)

And then there is HIV. A medical student comments that a wasted and miserable child is 'terribly neglected' inflicting judgment and damnation on the mother who is looking away at the wall because it is all just too painful.  All she is left with is the memory and guilt of trying for hours and hours to feed her own child, her own flesh and blood that was disappearing in front of her eyes, the way that she would one day herself... The words of women and mothers have an immeasurable value - we would all do well to listen.

“Fragile” by Bernedette Muthien

in your eyes

that shift with the anxieties

of these times

i see the deepest compassion

imaginable

for the perpetrators in all we are

the survivor-victims we're forced to be

and in your wide open eyes

i see reflected

my very own

soul

and for your single act of kindness

i offer you

my fragile heart

Tim Barrus & Cinemateque Films

“Oliver Twist” by Charles Dickens [extract]

The medical gentleman walked away to dinner; and the nurse, having once more applied herself to the green bottle, sat down on a low chair before the fire, and proceeded to dress the infant.

What an excellent example of the power of dress, young Oliver Twist was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned him his proper station in society. But now that he was enveloped in the old calico robes which had grown yellow in the same service, he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once--a parish child--the orphan of a workhouse--the humble, half starved drudge--to be cuffed and buffeted through the world--despised by all, and pitied by none.

Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of church-wardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder.

***

'What are you crying for?' inquired the gentleman in the white waistcoat. And to be sure it was very extraordinary. What COULD the boy be crying for?

'I hope you say your prayers every night,' said another gentleman in a gruff voice; 'and pray for the people who feed you, and take care of you--like a Christian.'

“Creation” Michelangelo (Sistine Chapel, Vatican)

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience (Mahatma Gandhi)

Melvin Burgess

Author of children’s fiction: Works include Junk, Doing, Nicholas Dane

Yes, they were angry, but they were also determined that they would move on and that they wouldn't let the people who had abused them win. Listening to them was an illustration in just how powerful the human spirit can be... The stories they told me were so much more horrific than anything you could make up and what struck me was just how resilient they were…

Tim Barrus & Cinemateque Films

http://showmeyourlife.tumblr.com/

New technologies. The potential of reaching large numbers of adolescents with HIV prevention messages to increase knowledge and change behaviours (UNICEF June 2011).

Internet access is a human right, according to a United Nations report (May 2011).

Real Stories Gallery would like to thank all the children and adolescents who are harnessing today's technologies and courageously raising awareness of the trauma and human rights abuses experienced by their peers left behind, whilst they have reached a safe house and access to HIV and AIDS medications.

Everyone’s participation in raising awareness makes a profound difference in assisting those working on the front line, including our international Permanent Representatives and Permanent Observers to the United Nations, New York.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an international law reinforcement of the Nuremberg Trial Judgments, upholds the rights of one nation to intervene in the affairs of another if said nation is abusing its citizens, and rose out of a 1939–1945 World War II Atlantic environment of extreme split between "haves" and "have nots." Our most vulnerable community members, humanities' sons and daughters, are waiting for adults to alleviate their trauma associated with the transmission of HIV and access to appropriate healthcare.

It's all about choices; standing up for the Rights of the Child (under 18s) and assisting our neighbours who are struggling to stand up.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989): 2 of the 192 UN Member Countries have NOT yet ratified the Convention. The United States of America and Somalia.

Two optional protocols : Two superhighways for the trafficking of HIVAIDS.

The Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography: 55 of the 192 UN Member Countries have NOT yet ratified the Convention’s Optional Protocol.

The Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict: 60 of the 192 UN Member Countries have NOT yet ratified the Convention’s Optional Protocol.

"SINDISIWE" by Arja Salafranca (art for humanity) extract

Raising my camera,

you hide your sign,

again and again.

I look through the viewfinder,

but you're too quick,

the minute I click,

you pull your sign away.

You won't let me take your photo with a sign

that places you somewhere at the bottom,

asking for money.

"Don’t be afraid to look me in the eye" by Tim Barrus

Tim Barrus: Enfants Prostitués

1. Don’t push yourself on me in the name of help if I don’t want or need it. I have the ability to make decisions for myself. Honor my decisions even if you don’t agree with them.
2. We have lots of people offering us “help,” but most are NOT actually meeting our needs. Meet my needs, not your desires. If you don’t know what my needs are, it is ok to ask.
3. If you offer help and I accept, follow through on your promises. Do not lie to us or give us a false sense of hope. Be real about how much you can and will help.
4. If you offer help, I want it to address my immediate needs! Not something that will help me 5 years from now. For instance, if I don’t have food, a place to sleep or my fix, then scholarships for school have very little relevance in my life.
5. Some people are happy in this life. Thinking I require help OUT of this life is bad thinking on YOUR part.
6. Don’t assume I’m strung out and need help kicking. Maybe I’m not strung out or maybe I have no desire to quit.
7. Don’t pity me or feel sorry for me. Remember, anyone can end up in a rough place in life. When someone pities you, it makes you feel “less than” or ashamed of your lack of ability to get yourself out of the rough situation you found yourself in. Remember, it could be you standing here working next to me later!
8. If you want to help, make yourself available and perhaps offer options. Let me choose the type of help I want/need, not what you think I need.
9. Don’t judge me! If you are judging me, you are not in a position to help me.
10. Don’t tokenize me. Street-based workers come from all different races, genders, religions, socio-economical backgrounds and education levels. Don’t assume that just because “Pretty Women” is your favorite movie, you know me.
11. Be patient if I need help. Chances are I’m in survival mode, and you need to respect where I am, not where you want me to be.
12. Respect me. Don’t be afraid to look me in the eye.

“A novel insight into child abuse” by Patrick Butler. Guardian.co.uk; 30 Nov. 2001 [extracts]

In 1999 the Lancet medical journal published a piece by an American pediatrician. It proposed that "when teaching our students about the medical ramifications of poverty and the importance of child advocacy, we could do no better that to point them in the direction of Charles Dickens... rarely have children had a more effective proponent." As Dr Harvey Marcovitch, a spokesman for the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, echoed "Medics can learn a lot from novels and poetry."

Dr Patricia Brennan, a pediatric consultant at Sheffield children's hospital, suggests Oliver Twist is a textbook of child abuse: "I was conscious that this was a 19th century novel but at the same time, there in the background, were all sorts of observations of abuse some of which have only been brought to the fore in recent research. You look at this book and it's all there.” Dicken’s observations and skill have also been discussed by John Skelton, a senior lecturer at the department of primary care and general practice at the University of Birmingham: "The death of Paul Dombey in Dicken's Dombey and Son is an extraordinary insight into what you might presume a young child feels when he's dying… [it offers] students a different way into looking at the world. Medical school involves a large amount of rote learning of knowledge. Literature works in an entirely different way.”

Oliver Twist, Dr Patricia Brennan believes, may be similarly instructive. "With child abuse people are divided. They either see it under every stone or they do not think it happens at all. Oliver Twist may help people face up to child abuse, or keep their minds open to it."

Gregory Miller and Edith Chen

University of British Columbia psychological scientists

Miller and Chen suspected that abuse and neglect might compromise children’s immune systems in lasting ways. Specifically, they wondered if emotional stresses in early life might lead to exaggerated inflammatory response to germs. Inflammatory response is a normal and essential part of the immune response to microbial threat, but chronically elevated inflammation has been linked to disease. As reported on-line in the journal Psychological Science, the teenagers who had been reared in difficult circumstances showed not only a greater inflammatory reaction—but also one that increased over time...  (www.psychologicalscience.org May, 2010)

"Nicholas Dane" by Melvin Burgess: A terrible tale of child abuse with a twist of Charles Dickens. Yorkshirepost.co.uk, 5 June, 2009

If there was ever going to be someone brave enough to turn abuse in children's homes into a novel for teenagers, it was Melvin Burgess. It was back in 1996 that his novel Junk about teenage heroin-addicts marked him out from most of the other authors in the young adult genre. Then, in 2004, with the publication of Doing It, an open and honest account of under-age sex, controversy once again came knocking. Burgess remains unapologetic and it's with good cause. Both his previous books were bestsellers, embraced by a generation who had finally found an author who wrote about the realities of the life of a teenager that most adults would prefer to turn a blind eye to. His latest book is no different.

Nicholas Dane, is the story of a 14-year-old boy who is sent to a children's home following the death of his mother. Finding an institution where violence and intimidation is endemic, he is also abused by the apparently respectable deputy head. While the book may be fiction, it has its roots in all-too-familiar reality. "It was one of those issues which just doesn't seem to go away," he says. "When I was growing up, thousands of boys and girls were subjected to the most horrendous sexual and physical abuse in the very places they were supposed to find security.”

"It was something which I had been thinking of tackling for a little while and then I read about a case in Manchester which had recently gone to court. I contacted the prosecuting solicitor who not only agreed to talk to me about the case, but passed on my details to those who had testified against their abusers. Having already opened up about their experiences and broken through the silence which so often surrounds the issue, a number of them were willing to talk about what had happened. I wasn't sure what I expected, but the stories they told me were so much more horrific than anything you could make up, but what struck me was just how resilient they were," says the author.

"Yes, they were angry, but they were also determined that they would move on and that they wouldn't let the people who had abused them win. Listening to them was an illustration in just how powerful the human spirit can be."

Melvin knows that a story of a teenager caught in a corrupt 1980s' children's home is bound to offend the sensibilities of some parents, but he insists that honesty is the only way of protecting children in the future. "Some people have said they wouldn't want their children to read a book about child abuse," he says. "That's fine, but I do think there is a need for us all to talk about the issue, and one way of doing that is through fiction. The reason so many cases were swept under the carpet was because no-one dared to speak about it and for many it sparked a vicious cycle of abuse."

Despite the shocking subject matter, Melvin knew that if the book was to have the desired effect, it also had to be a page-turner, which is why he turned to the master of social realism, Charles Dickens. "In Oliver Twist, he wrote about the workhouse, one of the great scandals of the age. It was an institution designed to help the poor, but which during his time had become a place of fear and misery. Oliver Twist was an expos of how society had failed the most vulnerable. It may be set against a pretty grim backdrop, but it makes you want to read on."