Statement On Children's Rights

A few days ago, I wrote a post on children's rights. It told about how the United States is the only country in the entire world that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This treaty is an effort to guarantee basic rights to all of the world's children.

Yesterday, I got an excellent comment on the post from someone named Patsky in the United Kingdom. This comment explained the need for all nations, including the United States, to ratify this treaty (and he/she explained it far better than I did). I thought the comment was so good that I have reprinted it as a post for you to read. Here it is:

I work to promote children's rights in the UK and it's important to know that, even in economically and politically stable nations such as ours, there's a very long way to go before children will have the same access to their rights for protection, provision and participation as are available to adults.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) interprets the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights as it should be applied in the special case of children whose journey between wholly dependent infancy and independent adulthood means that, for a greater or lesser period between birth and age 18, they must rely on others for their physical, financial and emotional security.

The UNCRC identifies each nation's responsibility to ensure that human children have access to what they need in order to develop as effective human beings. It covers basic physical needs - such as access to food and water (challenges that we might appear to have dealt with in the developing world, although some children's rights thinkers have begun to look at the levels of salt and sugar in western children's diet as evidence that nation states are not sufficiently protecting and providing for children in this regard). Some other rights are to education, play, family, services, safety from harm and - most controversially (and most centrally) - to be consulted and to have their views taken seriously.

All of the rights laid down in the UNCRC address basic human needs. They are not about 'wants'. In the case of rights to education, for instance, they do not involve any child's 'right' to eg a place at private school or to be taken to school in the car by their parents. What they involve is a child's right to an education that enables their personal human development now and in the future - and there is room for improvement in any society for that.

As I understand it (and I am no expert on this at all), the US has always taken the view that its own policies sufficiently uphold children's rights. It's quite clear that this cannot be the case when children are imprisoned and physical punishment is enabled by the state (both these things are also true in the UK and the latter is the area that I specifically work to change). There will be myriad other examples.

Somalia is, of course, a completely unstable state. The UNCRC has been ratified by many such states who, from the evidence of how they mistreat their adult population will most certainly be contravening children's rights. But the fact that they have ratified the convention means that there is at least some way for the UN to monitor children's experiences and to hold these nations to account. This information informs NGOs who work in these difficult circumstances and will enable them to better target their resources.

Of course, such UN monitoring is just the intervention that the US has always shied away from. But, if the US accepts its responsibilities in terms of human rights, then it must accept the same for children and join the family. I guess it's up to folk like yourself to press for that, and to send President Obama a clear message that change in this area is also needed.

As a final comment, children's rights in the US have often been dismissed because they would weaken parents' rights. But the point about human rights is that every individual holds the same rights; they complement each other and pull gently against one another. They constitute the ultimate in give and take. So parents' rights and children's rights should be regarded as working together.

Good luck over there.

I am thoroughly ashamed that the United States has not ratified this treaty, especially in light of how much we preach human rights to the rest of the world, and I believe other decent Americans are equally ashamed. I will continue to post periodically on this subject until the United States comes to its senses, and I urge you to write President Obama and those in Congress to stop delaying and ratify the Convention on the Rights of Children.

It is the right thing to do.