Children of Despair – The status of children in occupied Tibet.

The purpose of this paper – presented to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child by the Tibetan Youth Congress and the Tibetan Youth Association in Europe at the UN Committee’s 12th Session – is to provide an overview of the state of children in Chinese-occupied Tibet, a state which cannot be clearly understood without appreciating the wide-spread and continuous human rights violations in Tibet. Tibetan children’s rights are closely linked to the Tibetan people’s quest for independence or self-determination. Children in Tibet today suffer serious, ongoing human rights violations which affect their lives as individuals and threaten their distinct cultural, religious and national identity.