TNAG-1856-FCO40-2631-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-memoranda-and-minutes-of-me-1989 — Page 185

HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE

28 June 1989 香港立法局——————————一九八九年六月二十八日

COUNCIL

49

The Future United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is more than a document. It stresses that the child's rights is a global concern and action needs to be taken to enforce what all nations are certain to endorse. I would urge that the Government support this convention when it is formally announced and that a working group should be formed to oversee the implementation of the convention's provisions.

Sir, I support the motion.

the child in

MR. EDWARD HO: Sir, the best picture that I can conjure up is that of a child smiling, unaffected, innocent and radiant. The worst image misery and pain.

Lately, our community debated extensively on human rights, and we remembered the United Nations' International Covenants on Human Rights when we talked about the Basic Law. But, how many of us have ever paused to consider the rights of the child? Adults consider matters on their own level. They tend to forget that children are not just possessions, and they too have their rights, incidentally, the very same words that my honourable colleague, Mr. HUI Yin-fat, used.

The subject of the motion today is about improving the well-being of children in Hong Kong, but more importantly, it is about the rights of the child: the rights of children to be afforded the necessary protection and their harmonious development. The subject under consideration is not what we wish to give to the child; but what, by rights, the child should get from us.

Sir, I understand my colleagues will speak on a variety of topics affecting the rights of the child. I shall concentrate on children with social and psychological problems and, in particular, in relation to broken and problem families.

We know that emotional or behavioural problems in adults are often associated with unhappy childhood experience: experience such as broken homes, the death of a parent, parental cruelty or an unloving or quarrelsome home.

Extensive studies showed that there is a strong linkage between broken homes and delinquency, and that children from broken homes have higher tendencies to develop anti-social problems.