CRC/C/GC/21 unemployment of caregivers; precarious families; family breakdown; polygamy;5 exclusion from education; substance abuse and mental ill-health (of children or families); intolerance and discrimination, including against children with disabilities, children accused of witchcraft, former child soldiers rejected by families and children cast out from families as a result of questioning their sexuality or identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex or asexual; and families’ inability to accept children’s resistance to harmful practices, such as child marriage and female genital mutilation.6 III. Objectives 9. The objectives of the general comment are: (a) To clarify the obligations of States in applying a child rights approach to strategies and initiatives for children in street situations; (b) To provide comprehensive and authoritative guidance to States on using a holistic, child rights approach to: prevent children experiencing rights violations and the lack of choices that results in them having to depend on the streets for their survival and development; and to promote and protect the rights of children already in street situations, ensuring a continuum of care and helping them to develop to their fullest potential; (c) To identify the implications of particular articles of the Convention for children in street situations to enhance respect for them as rights holders and full citizens, and to enhance understanding of children’s connections to the street. IV. Holistic long-term strategies based on a child rights approach A. Child rights approach Description 10. In a child rights approach, the process of realizing children’s rights is as important as the end result. A child rights approach ensures respect for the dignity, life, survival, wellbeing, health, development, participation and non-discrimination of the child as a rights holder. 11. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 7 a child rights approach is one that: (a) Furthers the realization of child rights as established in the Convention and other international human rights instruments; (b) Uses child rights standards and principles from the Convention and other international human rights instruments to guide behaviour, actions, policies and programmes, particularly: non-discrimination; the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; the right to be heard and taken seriously; and the child’s right to be guided in the exercise of his or her rights by caregivers, parents and community members, in line with the child’s evolving capacities; 5 6 7 See joint general recommendation No. 31 of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women/general comment No. 18 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (2014) on harmful practices, paras. 25-28. Ibid., paras. 19-24. See UNICEF, Child Rights Education Toolkit: Rooting Child Rights in Early Childhood Education, Primary and Secondary Schools (Geneva, 2014), p. 21. Available from https://www.unicef.org/crc/files/UNICEF_CRE_Toolkit_FINAL_web_version170414.pdf. See also general comment No. 13, para. 59. See also “Human Rights Based Approach to Development Cooperation”, available from http://hrbaportal.org/the-human-rights-based-approach-to-developmentcooperation-towards-a-common-understanding-among-un-agencies. 5