OHCHR
The Committee on the Rights of the Child today opened its online eighty-seventh session, electing a new Chairperson and Bureau, and adopting its agenda and programme of work for the session, during which it will review the reports of Luxembourg and Tunisia.
The Committee elected its new Chair and Bureau. Mikiko Otani (Japan) was elected as Chair of the Committee. The Vice-Chairs are Velina Todorova (Bulgaria), Philip Jaffe (Switzerland), Hynd Ayoubi Idrissi (Morocco) and Faith Marshall-Harris Barbados).
In his address to the Committee, Mahaman Cissé-Gouro, Director of the Human Rights Council and Treaty Mechanism Division at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Representative of the Secretary-General, said this new global wave of COVID-19 was having severe consequences for a greater number of children, with access to essential health, social protection and education services being continuously constrained. Children were facing mental health issues, with large numbers of children reporting anxiety, fear, irritability and depressive symptoms. In particular, children living with chronic illness, disability or existing psychological disorders were likely to be at an elevated risk of mental health distress, as were migrant children and children from disadvantaged socio-economic situations. Child poverty was also continuing to rise at an alarming rate.