SAY IT RIGHT! III – Living Well: Our Right to Survival

Article 6: Our Survival and Development

As young people, we have the right to life. Also, governments have the responsibility to ensure our survival and development to the maximum extent possible.

Article 9: Separation from our Parents

We have the right to live with our parents and not to be separated from them, unless this goes against our best interests. In any hearings or proceedings concerning a separation, we have the right to make our views known. We also have the right to keep in contact with both of our parents. If the separation comes from a government decision, it must provide us with information on our parents’ whereabouts.

Article 18: Responsibility of Parents and Guardians

Both of our parents or guardians are responsible for our upbringing, and this responsibility belongs to them before anyone else. The government will support our parents in bringing us up and make sure that child care is available for working parents.

Article 24: Health and Health Care

We have the right to the highest level of health and medical care attainable. Governments have the responsibility to combat child mortality levels, ensure medical assistance to young people, fight malnutrition and disease, guarantee health care for new and expectant mothers, make health education available, develop preventive health care and abolish traditional harmful practices.

Article 25: In Care, Review of our Placement

If we are placed by the authorities under protection, care or treatment, we have the right to a regular review of that placement.

Article 26: Our Social Security

We have the right to benefit from social security, including social insurance. These benefits will be distributed in relation to the resources and circumstances of ourselves and our parents or guardians.

Article 27: Our Standard of Living

We have the right to an adequate standard of living for our physical, mental, spiritual, moral, and social well-being. Our parents or guardians have the primary responsibility to make sure that our standard of living is acceptable. The government has a responsibility to assist parents or guardians who are not able to provide their children with this standard.

A youth has a personal story to share about the suicide of a friend.

Article 31: Leisure and Recreation

We have the right to leisure and recreation, and to participate freely in cultural and artistic activities.

Article 41: Higher Standards are Superior

If standards of national or international laws are superior to this Convention, the higher standards will always apply.

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