The recent news that the UK has dramatically fallen in the world rankings from 11th to 156th in an independent analysis of childrens rights is something that should act as a severe wake up call to whichever party or coalition takes over the running of the country on Friday. The reason for the fall is primarily due to the rises in discrimination faced by children from Muslim and Traveller communities who are being faced with discrimination as a result of changes to the way in which our society reacts to these communities. Apparently we now rank among the bottom 10 global performers in the arena of improving rights of the child, after we achieved the lowest-possible score across all six available indicators in the domain of Child Rights Environment (CRE), according to the KidsRights Index 2017. This should be a matter of huge embarrassment to the current Government that we have fallen down so low in this table of nations, the KidsRights Foundation was established to focus on improving the rights of children in developing nations, for the sixth largest economy in the world to score so badly is an appalling reflection of the state of our society.

Marc Dullaert, founder and chairman of the KidsRights Foundation, urged the UK to treat non-discrimination as a policy priority, and to speed up the process of aligning its child protection laws with the Convention on the Rights of the Child at both the national and devolved levels, as well as in all crown dependencies. “Discrimination against vulnerable groups of children and youths is severely hampering opportunities for future generations to reach their full potential,” Mr Dullaert said.