In 1989, over a hundred world leaders signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a treaty for human rights that centers children.

But its seeds go back farther in the 20th century, to the woman who founded Save the Children in the UK, Eglantyne Jebb. In 1924, she presented the “ Declaration of the Rights of the Child to world leaders in Geneva – asserting that every child had human rights.”

In 1959, a version of this document was adopted by the United Nations.

Those manifestos inspired the most recent UNCRC we are familiar with today, “the most rapidly and widely ratified international human rights treaty in history.” However, according to Amnesty International, while 196 UN member countries have done so, the Unites States, while having signed it, is the only one not to have ratified it and made it law.