The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child is drafting a seminal General Comment on children's rights and big business.
This is an opportunity to render the telecoms industry responsible for electromagnetic wave pollution emitted from cellphones and cellphone towers.
As a citizen's action group in the heart of Paris, we recommend:
1. The General Comment should acknowledge that children's physiology places them at greater risk to environmental pollution, including electromagnetic wave emissions from cellphones and base transceiver stations, a factor that requires stricter legal thresholds and precautions under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
2. The General Comment should include language stipulating regular testing by an independent body of experts to measure the environmental impacts of this type pollution, with appropriate sanctions for widespread or systematic violations.
Until the telecom industry can prove that electromagnetic wave exposure is safe for children, we must uphold the principle of precaution.
As the use of digital technology explodes, creating a vibrant tool for extending children's rights worldwide, legally binding standards and regulations that make this technology safe to use are surely in order.