Convention on the Rights of the Child

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a United Nations human rights treaty that sets out civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural protections for every person under the age of eighteen, unless national law sets an earlier age of majority. The UN General Assembly adopted it on 20 November 1989, the thirtieth anniversary of the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child, and it entered into force on 2 September 1990 after the required number of ratifications. It is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, with every UN member state except the United States now a party. The convention requires ratifying states to act in the best interests of the child and to report periodically to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, a panel of eighteen independent experts that reviews national compliance, and it has been supplemented by three optional protocols covering children in armed conflict, the sale and trafficking of children, and a complaints procedure for individual violations.