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Issue 00492 |
October 27 - November 2, 2007 |
issn 0856 - 9135 |
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Law |
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Children and Privacy The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child provides (article16) that no child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence. No child shall be subjected to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation. The child has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
The same right was recognized in 1948 for the benefit of all human beings by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 12).
Privacy has different definitions depending on the context and the people. It may be defined as the ability of individuals to keep their personal affairs out of public view or to control the flow of information about them.
Almost all countries have laws which in some way limit privacy. For instance, taxation normally requires passing on information about earnings. The situation varies from one country to another. A country may require public disclosure of information which would be considered private in other countries.
Privacy is linked to several other issues such as taxation, security, confidentiality, freedom of speech and information.
One person’s speech can sometimes be considered a violation of another person’s privacy and lead to a complicated legal issue. Identity theft, for example, is a serious concern which is caused by a lack of privacy or failure of confidentiality.
Some parents consider that children should have no privacy. Such parents keep on monitoring their children’s activities, especially phone conversations. They want to know about people or friends their children associate with. They want to know, on a daily basis, the exact content of their children’s school bag. They think that children, especially those under 15 years of age, are not able to make wise choices in choosing friends, entertainment, books, or other fields of interest.
Those parents are also very concerned about the fact that a child or a teenager may use his or her privacy in a wrong way by consuming drugs, watching pornography movies or engaging secretly in other indecent or unhealthy activity. For this reason, they feel that they should have a total control on all components of their children’s lives.
Children are mentally young and vulnerable. This circumstance can justify why parents are worried about the way a child can make use of his or her privacy. However, the right of the child to privacy should not be totally denied. Parents should exercise patience and use tact in order to talk with their children on issues such as how to deal with choosing friends, phone conversation, text-messaging communication and other relevant matters. The most important is to draw successfully the attention of children on the dangerous nature of certain choices or activities and make them understand why it is in their interest to comply with some limitations to the enjoyment of their right to privacy.
This issue of how far should children be allowed to enjoy their right to privacy is complex and depends on factors such as culture, religion, type of society, socio-economic backgrounds of families and other considerations.
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