My day, my rights: Listening to Children the World has Left Behind
November 20 marks the anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and is celebrated every year as World Children's Day. It is a day for children, and as such, it is shaped by their rights and their voices. Unfortunately, many of those rights remain unfinished promises. This year's theme, "My Day, My Rights," is both a celebration and a challenge: a call to stop talking about children and start listening to them.
Yet, for millions of children around the world, their rights exist only on paper. As of 2023, 272 million children and youth remain out of school, a figure that has increased by 3 per cent since 2015. The majority live in low-income and least developed countries, where schools often lack the most basic resources: One in three has no sanitation, more than half have no electricity and two in three lack digital tools. Behind every figure is a child whose potential is slipping away, not for lack of ability, but for the lack of opportunity.
Education: The key that unlocks every right
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4, Quality Education for All by 2030, grows more urgent with each passing year. It is essential to understand that education is the key that unlocks progress across all other goals: It reduces inequality, improves health and livelihoods and helps communities rise from poverty and recover from conflict. It builds tolerance and resilience, sparks innovation and enables children to imagine a better future.
But to deliver on that promise, education must be treated as a national investment priority, not an optional expense.
When communities come together for learning
For instance, in rural Nepal, hundreds of children who once worked in the fields or stayed home to care for younger siblings are now returning to classrooms. Mothers, many of whom had never attended school themselves, are learning new income-generating skills, such as mushroom farming and handicraft production. Their small businesses have changed entire families: Children who once earned a few rupees herding cattle now spend their days learning to read, count and dream.
In one village, a banana farmer used his weekends to find out-of-school children, helping enrol them one by one. In another, a school principal used his own savings to rebuild a damaged classroom. These measures, driven by persistent local action and supported by educational organisations, take a more inclusive approach to removing multiple barriers and helping out-of-school children return to learning.
Thousands of miles away, in the floating villages of Cambodia’s Battambang province, the barriers look very different but feel just as heavy. Families in Prey Chas commune live on the waters of the Tonle Sap Lake, their lives bound to the rhythms of fishing and floods. Climate change has made those rhythms erratic as storms arrive without warning, droughts last longer and parents working on the lake return too late to ferry their children to school. Missing 10 or 12 days of school each month became common and many children simply dropped out.
The solution was strikingly simple: boats. Instead of pushing for major policy changes, the focus was on finding a solution the community could easily adopt and implement right away. Families received rowboats so children could travel to school safely, every day, regardless of their parents' work schedules. Attendance soared and dropout rates fell.
Stories like these remind us that education is far more than a classroom experience. When a child is denied that right, a cycle of poverty and powerlessness continues. When they are given the chance to learn, they become catalysts for change in their communities.
Education as a foundation for peace
Education teaches empathy, resilience and cooperation – values the world needs now more than ever. But too many children are still left behind because they were born in the wrong place, to the wrong income bracket, or in communities overlooked by opportunity.
To achieve the global education goal, countries must invest in teachers, improve school infrastructure and close the technology gap that separates rural from urban classrooms. The world must also recognize that learning begins at home and within communities, with parents, caregivers and local leaders who believe education is worth the effort.
Listening as commitment
As the theme for World Children's Day 2025 suggests, children are not asking for sympathy; they are asking for their opinions to matter and to be heard.
Listening to them means more than celebrating their courage once a year. It means committing to build a world where no child has to row across a floodplain or work in a field simply because the system failed them. It means ensuring that every government, every community and every one of us makes education a shared responsibility.
Only then will their day truly become their right.
Disclaimer: The authors first published this blog on the CGTN website. Click here to read the original post.
