Next Monday, November 20, International Children's Rights Day will be commemorated, a key day to remember the approval of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by the United Nations on November 20, 1989, which at the same time was an expansion of the contents established and agreed in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1959. In this line, Catalonia takes a step forward and focuses on the digital rights of children and teenagers in the territory. Specifically, the initiative is promoted by the Secretaria de Polítiques Digitals del Departament d’Empresa i Treball de la Generalitat de Catalunya, with the collaboration of the Fundació Ferrer i Guàrdia. In this context, last May, the Report on the Digital Rights of Children and Adolescents was presented, which is part of the Catalan Charter for Digital Rights and Responsibilities, a participatory project that has as aim to define a normative and democratic framework to guarantee human rights in the digital age. In this sense, work is currently being done on the drafting of a manifesto to collect the demands expressed and shared by children and teenagers from the different territories in Catalonia.
"In schools, we organize discussion and debate groups on digital rights, where, for example, we ask children and teenagers what they think are these digital rights that should be protected and how they place them in terms of importance. The intention is to subsequently write a manifesto that includes all these concerns", explains Maria Padró-Solanet, research technician at the Fundació Ferrer i Guàrdia. "I like being able to give my opinion and learn new things. In fact, every time, I am more aware of the importance of my rights when I enter a web page», Berta, 1st year ESO student. "For me, the most important digital right is that of age, that is, to access content suitable for my age and to avoid seeing things I shouldn't be able to see", Aran, 1st year ESO student. "The reflections that children and teenagers have on digital technologies are very interesting and very complex, since in the end they live and constantly interact with them. In essence, we want the manifesto to capture all these impressions, sensations and visions of the children and teenagers of the different territories", concludes Padró-Solanet.