It is not easy to accept the reality that adults pay to have sex with children or view child pornography, or even sexually abuse or sell their own children into sexual slavery. It is no less unsettling that approximately 250 million children around the world from the age of five to fourteen are working, that every 40 seconds a child dies from malaria, and that an estimated 2 million children have been killed in armed conflicts during the past decade. Given that the Convention on the Rights of the Children is the most widely ratified international convention, we can see that there are obviously major problems in its implementation.

Are the threats which children face – such as poverty, sexual exploitation, and the threat of war – age-old? Or do they reflect a modern predicament? Are they made worse by specifically modern technologies and vulnerabilities? Whilst children have always been vulnerable, a picture is emerging of specifically modern threats in an era of globalization.

Firstly, child prostitution, child pornography and the trafficking of children are all major violations of children’s rights that have been exacerbated by modern technology. These crimes against children reach across national boundaries aided by modern methods of travel and communication, with perpetrators and victims in both industrial and developing countries. The scope and unregulated nature of the Internet has created an increase in both the volume and availability of child pornography. The Internet not only acts as a mechanism for making, displaying, trading and distributing child pornography; it is becoming also a magnet for child sex abusers, putting more children at risk. Attempts to tackle this are strengthening. For example, police in Britain are working the credit card details of 6,000 people whose details have arisen as part of a crackdown on child pornography by the United States Postal Inspection Service. The majority of abused children are the victims of people they know, with predators lurking within a child's circle of trust. But technology opens up a whole new realm of threats.

Secondly, the greatest underlying problem in realizing the rights of children is poverty, which is the cause of illiteracy, malnutrition, and health challenges such as HIV/AIDS. One in five of the world’s population - 1.2 billion people - live in absolute poverty, without adequate food, water, sanitation, healthcare or education for their children. Poverty is nothing new. But economic globalization has resulted in an alarming gap between rich and poor children across the globe, and arguably the worsening of the economic situation for some sections of humanity as the free market produces winners and losers. The liberal economic hegemony which underlies globalization has brought pressure for the privatization of public services in developing countries and the reduction of welfare provision. Many developing countries have no social safety net. At the same time, traditional care systems have been eroded and the result is deprivation. In turn, children are often pressured to work themselves.

Thirdly, whilst war should be the exclusive realm of adults, an estimated two million children were killed in armed conflicts in the past decade. Many others still serve as child soldiers. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sri Lanka, the Middle East and many other areas have experienced conflicts characterised by the use and abuse of child combatants. Children are clearly an attractive commodity for those who would seek to exploit them in this way: they are cheap, impressionable, easy to control, and often equally able as adults to inflict terrible crimes against fellow human beings. Again, child soldiers are not a new phenomenon. But modern civil wars, often struggles for and fuelled by natural resources, would seem to have a particularly appalling impact upon the young. Laws of war break down and young civilians are coerced into fighting or lured by food or false comradeship.

The preceding suggests some recommendations. In order to keep abreast with the evolving threats to children and fulfill the commitments that are made at international conventions on children’s rights it is essential to put children’s rights into a broad context of social, economic and technological change.

• It is essential to promote children’s rights as special needs in all major international initiatives such as development, information technology, human security and health. It is only by generating such a political momentum that the gap between consensus and implementation can be closed and globalization can be made to work for children, rather than against them.
• Free speech and anonymity on a free internet must be balanced against the protection of children. It is essential to clarify where the responsibility lies – in terms of suppliers and consumers of pornography – and to reach cooperation and agreement between police forces and credit card companies. Following the US and British leads, international agreements amongst governments and commercial services must be established.
• The International Development Targets, originated by the UN Conferences of the 1990s, commit the international community to reduce the proportion of people living in poverty by half, ensure that every child is in primary education, ensure reproductive health services for all and reverse environmental degradation – all by 2015. Only when these are taken seriously by all governments will the rights of child have a chance of being fulfilled.

Edward Newman is the academic project coordinator of UN University's Peace and Governance Programme. These are his personal views.