Eglantyne Jebb and the First Declaration of Children's Rights

After the First World War, blockades and economic collapse left many children in Central Europe hungry. In 1919 Eglantyne Jebb and her sister Dorothy Buxton founded the Save the Children Fund in London to raise money for them, and Jebb was even arrested and fined for distributing a leaflet showing a starving child. Jebb argued that helping children should not depend on charity alone but on recognized rights.

In 1923 she drafted a short Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which the League of Nations endorsed in 1924 as the Geneva Declaration. Its five points said children must be given the means for normal development, fed when hungry and nursed when sick, be first to receive relief in times of distress, be protected from exploitation, and be raised to serve others. The Geneva Declaration spoke of what adults owed children rather than rights children could claim themselves, a difference later documents would address.