Child Protection Initiatives - 1910 - 1919 - 1923 - Ellen Key, Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit) and Eglantyne Jebb.

• Ellen Key (1849-1926)              1910      "Barnabalk" (Childrens Code)
• Janusz Korczak (1878-1942)  1919      "A Magna Charta Liberalis"
• Eglantyne Jebb (1876-1928)   1923      "The Geneva declaration" 

Ellen Key - "Barna-balken" - The children's code (Ten commandments)

1. The right of all children to healthy parents, raised for their calling.
2. The right of all children is to protect both soul and body against blows and toil, against hunger and dirt.
3. The right of all children to a continuous, physical and spiritual development throughout their entire growing up period through full participation in comprehensive health and medical care, a degree-free acquisition of nature and culture, a vocational education based on aptitude -- not status.
4. The right of all children to disinheritance is their reference to the happiness-creating necessity of fully using their fully developed powers.
5. But will this children's code be written - and even more so lived out - before adults begin to become like children, in other words, spiritual instead of money-mad? Certainly, legislation for the full human rights of the child cannot be brought about before the transformations that today's "social preservationists" call "social subversion" have taken place.
6. The future will judge the level of culture of the present as the present has judged those ages when newborn children were exposed and the infants of conquered cities were beaten against the walls.
7. Yes, the judgment on our time must be stricter. For these ancient peoples did not know what they were doing when they let children's blood flow away like water. But our time allows millions of children to be exploited, starved, abused, neglected, school-sick, degenerate, criminal, and yet knows the consequences -- for the race as for society -- of all this happening. And why? Because people still do not want to count on the value of life instead of the value of gold.
8. One "Children's Day" a year is like a cup of water to an army of thirsty people.
9. Every day of the year should first and foremost be the children's, so that the years of childhood can be lived under the conditions that are indispensable for healthy and strong, happy and good people to grow up.
10. The state that first puts this demand into action will become the foremost cultural country of the future, its "pedagogical province," according to Goethe's program.

Actually, concerning Ellen Key, one should add the date 1900, and the publishing of her book "The Century of the Child". The book examines the rights and needs of children, placing a strong emphasis on their autonomy and the societal conditions affecting their upbringing.

Ellen Key - "Barna-balken" - The children's code - 1910.

Ellen Key

Actually, concerning Ellen Key, one should add the date 1900, and the publishing of her book "The Century of the Child".

Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit): 

In How to Love a Child, he wrote, “I call for a Magna Charta Libertatis concerning the Rights of the Child.  I came upon three basic rights of a child, but perhaps there are more of them.

1. The right of a child to his/her own death
2. The right of a child to the present day
3. The right of a child to be what he/she is

Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit)

In How to Love a Child, Janusz Korczak wrote, “I call for a Magna Charta Libertatis concerning the Rights of the Child. I came upon three basic rights of a child, but perhaps there are more of them.

Eglantyne Jebb (and also her sister Dorothy Buxton):

In 1923, Eglantyne Jebb (and her sister Dorothy Buxton) prepared the text of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. The fundamental needs of children were summarised in five points.

Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1924)
The text of the document, as published by the International Save the Children Union in Geneva on 23 February 1923, was as follows:

1. The child must be given the means requisite for its normal development, both materially and spiritually.
2. The child that is hungry must be fed, the child that is sick must be nursed, the child that is backward must be helped, the delinquent child must be reclaimed, and the orphan and the waif must be sheltered and succoured.
3. The child must be the first to receive relief in times of distress.
4. The child must be put in a position to earn a livelihood, and must be protected against every form of exploitation.
5. The child must be brought up in the consciousness that its talents must be devoted to the service of its fellow men.

This text was endorsed by the League of Nations General Assembly on 26 November 1924.

Eglantyne Jebb

Dorothy Buxton

One of the most significant words of Korczak, “Children are not future people, because they are people already... Children are people whose souls contain the seeds of all those thoughts and emotions that we possess. As these seeds develop, their growth must be gently directed.”