The spectrum of abuses that children face range from torture and ill-treatment by police to honour killings by family members, from child trafficking to bonded labour, from forced prostitution to working in sweatshops, from child soldiers to juvenile executions. For too long governments have paid lip service to the notion of children's rights. While the CRC emphasizes that the family is the natural environment for nurturing the child, it places the primary obligation on the state to protect children from all forms of abuse, neglect and exploitation, even where these areas are not carried out directly by state agents.
Children often suffer neglect, abuse and violence when they come into contact with the law.
Their legal rights are often ignored, their parents are not informed of their whereabouts and they are held in degrading conditions. Amnesty International has received testimony from children as young as 14 who have been sexually assaulted in Turkey while in police custody. For the vast majority of children, the reality of juvenile justice is not rehabilitation and special care, but punishment, intolerance and greater marginalization. The CRC prohibits the imposition of the death penally for crimes committed before the child turned 18. Yet in the 1990s, Amnesty International has documented 19 executions of persons convicted for crimes committed whilst under the age of 18 in Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the USA and Yemen.