UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Would Threaten the American Family
Originally published at Family Security Matters
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is a treaty that is extremely damaging to parental rights and the family structure, as well as our national sovereignty. The CRC was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1995, but opposition by members of the Senate kept the treaty from being ratified. Legislators found that it was incompatible with the rights of the parents to raise their children. But new Democrat majorities in Congress and a new administration in the White House make ratification of the CRC far more likely. President-elect Barack Obama has already expressed his support of the CRC and has said, “It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia,” the only other UN nation not to ratify the CRC. If our government were to ratify the CRC, the UN would undermine parental authority through government control of our children.
Our Constitution and Supreme Court protect the fundamental right of parents to raise their children as they see fit. After all, parents act in the best interest of their children, and know better how to raise their child than bureaucrats half a world away. Two Supreme Court cases are in direct conflict with the CRC. In Reno v. Flores, the Court held that “The ‘best interests of the child’ is not the legal standard that governs parents’ or guardians’ exercise of their custody.” Then, following Troxel v. Granville, Justice David Souter stated that parents cannot be overruled “merely because the judge might think himself more enlightened than the child’s parent.” But the Constitution states that once treaties are ratified they become “the supreme Law of the land.” Existing laws are overruled in favor of the treaty, and in the case of the CRC, almost all American laws concerning children and parental rights and the Constitution itself are overturned. The UN would have the final say over what is in the best interests of the child.
The UN’s own Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” However, pulling the child out of public school in favor of home schooling without the child’s approval violates the CRC. Christian education curriculum is in violation as well. The treaty also establishes a global curriculum for schools, which could drive home schooling and private schools into extinction.
New “rights” granted to children under the CRC include: freedom of expression, thought, association, privacy, conscience, religion, a right to rest and leisure, and more. Full abortion and contraceptive rights are granted, even against the wishes of the parents. Any child under the age of 18 is protected from “degrading punishment” and “physical violence,” ranging from spanking to the death penalty for minors – even for murder and rape.
National children’s health insurance and other welfare programs would be created for the U.S. in order to comply with CRC. The CRC even establishes a framework for the child to seek government review for every parental decision – a Pandora’s Box of litigation.
Children are guaranteed to have access to material of any kind, even material that parents find unacceptable. Protecting your children from pornography would be in violation of their “freedom of expression” and “right to privacy.” Bringing your children to church against their will would violate their “freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” as would forbidding your child from joining a cult or gang.
Perhaps worse than what is in the treaty is what is not in the treaty. When Australia argued that spanking was not specifically banned, the Committee replied: “the Convention should be interpreted holistically taking into consideration not only its specific provisions, but also the general principals which inspired it.” Meaning: the CRC is interpreted however the Committee wants it to be.
Phyllis Schafly, the Founder of the Eagle Forum, tells FamilySecurityMatters.org: “Unlike our U.S. Constitution, which only mentions rights that can be enforced against the government, this UN treaty declares rights of the child against parents, the family, private institutions, and society as whole. Do we really want to give every child the legal right to say anything he wants to his parents at the dinner table? To watch television (“access to the media”) instead of doing homework? To escape household chores because they interfere with his UN right to “rest and leisure”? To join a cult instead of attending his parents’ church? To refuse to speak English in our public schools? I think not. The UN Treaty on the Rights of the Child should be rejected as contrary to American constitutional law and common sense.”
Ratification of the CRC would destabilize marriage and weaken families, which would in fact provide a more damaging environment for children. Studies show that without the structure of traditional family, society is more likely to become dependent on government. Passage of this treaty would all but eliminate parental rights, destroy the family structure, and place control of U.S. domestic policy in the hands of a United Nations committee.
It will not threaten American family life except in situations where:
– parents abuse their sacred trust
– they harm, abuse or lead their children astray
– parents treat children as mindless property or mini-themselves to do only as they are told
– parents deny their children proper choice, voice and participation according to their age and level of understanding
– parents want to impart to their children ideas of hate, violence, and disregard of others
– parents want to deny their children the basic constitutional rights and protections they themselves insist they must enjoy.
The PR campaign seeks to protect parents rights they claim. They do not say what these rights are, nor will they answer the simple question, what rights do they say children have? I would like someone to answer that.
The PR campaign relies on gross misrepresentations, hysterical predictions, untruths and false claims. E.g. the CRC will stop smacking. It has not. It will allow abortions, so why is it supported by the Vatican? The US Constitution will not be over-ridden – no other country has allowed its constitution to be down-rated and the US always states what parts of a convention it will not implement, as do all other nations, and it will surely do so when ratifying the CRC.
The CRC will back parents role, that is a central statement of the convention, and it states that the role of govt is to support parents and to intervene only where they cannot or will not fulfil their obligations. Also, as the CRC is a minimum standards statement, where national law is superior for the child, that will stand.
‘The Committee’ has only observational and recommendatory functions. The CRC 5-yearly review is where each national govt submits a progress report to ‘The Committee’ (of leading global experts on childhood issues). Govts usually say how good it all is, but the Committee also receives reports from other bodies in the country under review such as children’s rights, educational, parental, faith and other NGOs, and also from children’s delegations increasingly, so their voices are heard. These inputs provide civil society with a real opportunity to tell the Committee, and their own Govt, about issues they feel require more attention. The CRC more often acts to support parents views than Govts as we in the UK have seen, and we have seen progress by our govt after reports issued by the Committee. However this does not mean all recommendations are implemented by govts because it is a matter of choice, the Committee has no power other than to recommend. The worse the country’s regime, the less they implement.
One place for the US to start would be Rape of Children and Young People in your prisons, a scandal now exposed and reported by a senate committee. It is awful and heart-breaking. It says that children and parents have been ignored by state authorities, matters grossly covered up. This is no case for the CRC not to be implemented, it shouts out for the US to sign and parents to support its aspirations for all children.
I do also have to say that, despite what you may think, many in the rest of the world look to you to be leaders, to show the way and to put your power where it can do good. So US signing of CRC will send a signal, a powerful one. We all want to see that I can tell you. This from a country which stood with you, and where we are not afraid to say t you, now stand with us to protect ALL children, or is He only the God of America?
On children joining cults and not following their parents religion, how about children simply choosing not to believe what their parents want them to accept? Or if the parents are in an abusive and dangerous cult and the child wants to leave? What does your own marvellous Constitution say about that, let alone the CRC?
And for someone to complain kids want the right to play and rest in an age of long school days, parents scared to let them out, homework, some taking jobs because the family income is so low, and Recess disappearing at an alarming rate in your schools, juvenile curfews in 75% of your larger cities and towns, most of them not constitutional. Health insurance denied millions of children. An infant mortality rate which is worse than many other developed nations when you have the most powerful economy the world has ever seen.
Your own Supreme Court says that children in the US do have rights. Perhaps you need to agree what those are.
The depth of silliness of the PR argument is met when we read that the CRC will allow children to ‘escape household chores because they interfere with his UN right to “rest and leisure”’ – arrant tripe/nonsense/hype.
By the way it also includes the right to Play, and if you say children don’t have that as the most basic, innocent God-inspired and God-given Right, then that is unhealthy. The vision of childhood is that they will play in the Garden of Eden when we once again find our way there.
As some better person than I said “Play is the business of the Child”. For me it’s Let’s Make the World Fit for ALL Our Children to Play In.