[6] The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, composed of eighteen independent experts, is responsible for supervising the implementation of the convention by the states that have ratified it.

[9] The UN General Assembly adopted the convention and opened it for signature on 20 November 1989 (the 30th anniversary of its Declaration of the Rights of the Child).

The committee's interpretation of this section to encompass a prohibition on corporal punishment has been rejected by several state parties to the convention, including Australia,[18] Canada and the United Kingdom.

[20] There are unresolved tensions between "universalistic" and "relativistic" approaches in the establishment of standards and strategies designed to prevent or overcome the abuse of children's capacity to work.

[26] All successor states of Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic and Slovakia) and Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia) made declarations of succession to the treaty and currently apply it.

[30][31] In terms of the ratification of the convention, a significant number of laws, decrees and resolutions were approved in Azerbaijan by the President and the Cabinet of Ministers focusing on the development of the child welfare system.

[34] India ratified UNCRC on 11 December 1992, agreeing in principle to all articles but with certain reservations on issues relating to child labor.

[1] In India, there is a law that children under the age of 18 should not work,[citation needed][contradictory] but there is no outright ban on child labor.

[1] Although a law in October 2006 banned child labor in hotels, restaurants, and as domestic servants, there continues to be a high demand for children as hired help in the home.

It must not harm their school education and they must not work between 7 p.m. and 8 a.m. Iran has adhered to the convention (except for alleged child slavery)[37] since 1991 and ratified it in the Parliament in 1994.

[39] Although Iran is a state party to the convention, international human rights organisations[40][41] and foreign governments[42] routinely denounced executions of Iranian child offenders as a violation of the treaty.

[46] In response to criticisms expressed in the 1998 review by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva, the Irish government established the office of Ombudsman for Children.

A contemporaneous report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that Israel's investment in children is below the international average.

[48] In 2012, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child criticized Israel for its bombing attacks on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, stating, "Destruction of homes and damage to schools, streets and other public facilities gravely affect children" and called them "gross violations of the convention on the Rights of the Child, its Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict and international humanitarian law".

[49] New Zealand ratified the convention on 6 April 1993 with reservations concerning the right to distinguish between persons according to the nature of their authority to be in New Zealand, the need for legislative action on economic exploitation—which it argued was adequately protected by existing law, and the provisions for the separation of juvenile offenders from adult offenders.

[50] In 1994, the Court of Appeal of New Zealand dismissed the suggestion that the Minister for Immigration and his department were at liberty to ignore the convention, arguing that this would imply that the country's adherence was "at least partly window-dressing".

[53] In May 2007, New Zealand passed the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007, which removed the defence of "reasonable force" for the purpose of correction.

The committee said it was "deeply alarmed" over the discretionary power judges hold to treat juveniles as adults: In its 2004 report, the Saudi Arabian government had stated that it "never imposes capital punishment on persons ... below the age of 18".

Under the hudud – an Islamic law – prosecutors have reportedly sought the death penalty for the eight men, which if granted will make them ineligible for pardon.

[58] A 2017 decision by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea ruled that no kid zones were discriminatory, but this did not legally restrict them from existing.

[60] South Korea joined the Hague convention on International Child Abduction in 2012, but was criticized for its repetitive pattern of non-compliance.

[1] The United Kingdom ratified the convention on 16 December 1991, with several declarations and reservations,[68] and made its first report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child in January 1995.

The Bill was challenged by the UK Government and specified sections were found by the Supreme Court to be outwith the competence of the Scottish Parliament.

The bill was amended and again passed in December 2023, receiving Royal Assent on 16 January 2024 and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 came into force on 16 July 2024.

The States Assembly passed the Children and Young People (Jersey) Law 2022,[72] banning smacking, by abolishing the defence of "reasonable corporal punishment".

[76] Most notably, at the time several states permitted the execution and life imprisonment of juvenile offenders, a direct contravention of Article 37 of the convention.

[80] However, the Court issued a ruling in Jones v. Mississippi that Miller does not require States to make an independent finding of "permanent incorrigibility" before sentencing the juvenile to life imprisonment without parole.

State laws regarding the practice of closed adoption may also require an overhaul in light of the Convention's position that children have a right to identity from birth.

In 2020, the independent "Lancet-WHO-UNICEF Commission" proposed the development of an optional protocol to protect children from the marketing of tobacco, alcohol, formula milk, sugar-sweetened beverages, gambling, and potentially damaging social media, and the inappropriate use of their personal data.

[91] The Russian delegate, Kristina Sukacheva, remarked that governments voting against parents deliberately shirk their international responsibilities to provide for the rights of the child.