17. Роль музики в особистому житті, навчанні та медицині (The role of music in personal life, education, and medicine)

It is impossible to imagine our life without music. It accompanies us throughout our lives. Symphonic, chamber, instrumental, classical, folk, light, jazz, pop – these are only some kinds of music.

Music is a magic power that reflects human life and feelings. Like all beautiful things it’s eternal. Music lives in the smallest part of the universe. The nature itself seems to bring it forth. With the first ray of the sun birds greet a new day, crystal drops of dew ring on slim stalks of grass, and brooks babble. And all this orchestra performs a morning sonata.

Evening has its own music saturated with a heavy flavour of flowers, tender singing of a nightingale, the vows of love, twilight, and stars. Music lives even in the silence and only a refined, sensitive, and delicate soul can feel and enjoy it. Music brings life to everything around us.

Music is a global language that expresses our emotions like happiness, sadness, frustration, or aggression, instead of words. People use music to manipulate personal moods, arousal, and feelings. Parades, church services, concerts, radio and television musical shows, and recordings are examples of situations and processes through which most of us have experience our moods, emotions, and feelings being lifted.

Music therapy and music medicine help many of the problems associated with handicapped children and adults. Besides the handicapped, music therapy is also effective in promoting relaxation, reducing stress and pain, alleviating anxiety.

Music can make people aware of current events around the world. It turns people’s attention to such serious conflicts of the modern world as war, poverty, environmental issues, and global diseases.

Music has become an integral part of our everyday lives. In many ways it helps us stay in tune mentally, physically, and spiritually. It’s an integral part of our souls, it’s our comfort and delight, as well as the best remedy. Music washes away from our souls the dust of everyday life.

18. Конвенція про права дитини: основні положення (The Convention on child rights: the main regulations)

Children deserve to be highly valued for the unique contribution they make through just being children. Respect for children as a global ideal has been affirmed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. The UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 20 November 1989. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights – civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights. The Convention defines a “child” as a person below the age of 18, unless the laws of a particular country set the legal age for adulthood as younger than 18.

The Convention sets out these rights in 54 articles and two Optional Protocols. It spells out the basic human rights that children everywhere have: the right to survival; to develop to the fullest; to protection from harmful influences, abuse and exploitation; and to participate fully in family, cultural and social life.

The four core principles of the Convention are non-discrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child. Every right spelled out in the Convention is inherent to the human dignity and harmonious development of every child. The Convention protects these rights by setting minimum standards that governments must meet in providing healthcare, education, legal, civil, and social services to children in their countries.

By agreeing to undertake the obligations of the Convention (by ratifying or acceding to it), national governments have committed themselves to protecting and ensuring children’s rights and they have agreed to hold themselves accountable for this commitment before the international community. States parties to the Convention are obliged to develop and undertake all actions and policies in the light of the best interests of the child.