View Full Version : U.N Convention on the Rights of Children
I didn't think to post the first article on this, but I will post future articles. These articles are sent to me by Parental Rights (org)
February 25, 2008
An In-depth Look at Article 9 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Last week, we began our series on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) by looking (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/uncrc/whats-wrong-with-the-un-convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child) at the Convention's central focus on the "best interests of the child," which allows the government to substitute its will for that of the parents. This principle is significant as we turn our attention to one of the first rights that the CRC grants to children: the right to remain in their family.
THE RIGHT TO A FAMILY... ALMOST
At first glance, Article 9 of the CRC may appear harmless and even idyllic: "a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will, except when competent authorities subject to judicial review determine, in accordance with applicable law and procedures, that such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child." But despite references to "competent authorities" and "judicial review," a closer examination quickly reveals that the emphasis on the child's "best interests" grants the government broad latitude to intervene in the family.
There are many broad and diverse opinions when it comes to what makes a "good parent." Parents may read a popular parenting book, attend a parenting class, or turn to their own parents or a trusted mentor for advice. Likewise, there is also a broad range of opinions when it comes to when a child should be removed from the home. Clearly a child who is being sexually or physically abused should be saved from that circumstance, but what about more complex issues? Should children be separated from their parents if they are spanked? What about parents who are disabled or have a physical handicap? What about families who are too poor to provide the best quality of living for their children? There are many answers that could be given about what is in the "best interests of the child," depending on the person who is being asked.
This is why the Supreme Court ruled in 1993 that the "best interests" test could only be applied when a family is broken, such as in divorce proceedings when the dispute is between two parents. When the family is intact, however, courts are required to prove that a parent is "unfit" to raise the children, which requires a state to satisfy a much higher burden of proof. Article 9 destroys this distinction and uses the same test for families that are broken and families that are intact. By analogy, the "best interests" standard treats the government as if it were the other parent in a divorce-proceeding, placed on the same footing as the child's natural parents in a battle for custody of the child.
TRAMPLING ON PARENTAL RIGHTS
In 1980, the Supreme Court of Washington heard the case of a fifteen-year-old girl who had enlisted state social workers in her quest to live separately from her parents. The girl had resisted her parents' efforts to discipline her through grounding, and claimed that there was "conflict within her home," though when asked by a judge about the nature of this conflict, the girl simply replied: "I just feel that there's a communication gap there." In an imposing display of judicial power, the court ruled that the conflict between the parents and the child was so severe that it justified the child being placed under the custody of the state, even though the parents were fit and their behavioral standards were not unreasonable.
Twenty-eight years later, families in the United States are still at risk of losing their children if the government believes it can do a better job. In 2004, a social worker hastily accused the parents of one-year-old Julia of child abuse after learning that she had suffered fifteen bone fractures in a period of five months. The parents had no previous record of abuse, the government never presented evidence that they had ever harmed their daughter, and several medical experts testified that the little girl had a brittle bone disease that was responsible for the fractures. But despite the evidence, the family court took little Julia away from her family and placed her in a foster home, citing her "best interests." Julia remained in foster care until this past December, when her family finally won her back. She is now four-years-old, and has spent the last three years living with strangers in a foster home, but her family is overjoyed to finally welcome her home.
More recently an autistic boy was forcibly removed from his home despite the evidence being "clear that the parents have always stood by and tried to help their son." Read about this tragic story on our blog here (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/the-issue/autistic-boy-removed-from-his-home-because-the-government-disagreed-with-the-parents).
WHO DECIDES?
Julia's happy ending was three long years in the coming - all because of government officials who claimed to act in the "best interests of the child," without bothering to prove that Julia's parents were unfit to raise her. Her story is a warning of the insidious sub-plot that runs through Article 9 of the CRC, which grants the government a dangerous power over the lives of its citizens.
But Julila's story is more than just a warning. It is also a reminder that the battle for parental rights is more than just a battle to change the Constitution: it is a battle to protect real people, to save young lives that are in no danger, except from the government that claims to protect them. Innocent children and loving parents deserve far better than justice that comes three years too late.
Please forward this message onto your friends and urge them to sign the Petition to Protect parental rights at http://www.parentalrights.org/petition.
Sources
In Re Sumey, 94 Wash. 2d 757 (Wash. S.C. 1980)
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm
Family wins custody battle in court
http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=647184&category=REGION&newsdate=12/14/2007
Autistic Boy Removed from his Home Because the Government Disagreed with the Parents (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/the-issue/autistic-boy-removed-from-his-home-because-the-government-disagreed-with-the-parents)
An In-depth Look at Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Last week (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/the-issue/a-childs-right-to-a-family-almost), we looked at how Article 9 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child gives the government authority to intervene in the decisions of parents simply by appealing to the child’s “best interests.” This week, we continue our in-depth analysis of the CRC by examining Article 12, which says: “States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.”
Which Children?
At the outset, three key observations are readily apparent. First, this right protects a child who is “capable of forming his or her own view,” which must be given “due weight,” in accordance with his or her age and maturity. Second, our government (”States Parties”) would be responsible for ensuring that this right is respected, both in public places and in private realms, such as the home. Finally, this responsibility extends to “all matters affecting the child.” These three tenets place incredible discretion in the hands of the government to challenge - and even reverse - the decisions of parents.
Although the Convention claims to protect children who are “capable of forming their own views,” this phrase is incredibly ambiguous. Indeed, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child recognized this ambiguity in 2006, when it asked for input from all UN member-states on the meaning of Article 12. A report by India’s Committee for Legal Aid to Poor suggested that the right to be heard extends to “the decision of the families and should not be restricted to Judicial and administrative proceedings only.” That same year, the Canadian Child Care Federation asserted that “Children need to be ‘heard’ during all stages of development, beginning in infanthood.” (emphasis in original)
“Suing” Your Parents?
In addition, Article 12 applies not only to legal and judicial proceedings involving a child, but also to decisions made within the privacy of a family. According to Dr. Geraldine van Bueren, Professor of International Law at the University of London and a lead-drafter of the CRC, “the duty on the State Party is to assure the right to freedom of expression in ‘all matters affecting the child’ and as a result places duties on the state in relation to matters traditionally relegated to the private sphere.” By referencing “all matters affecting the child,” van Bueren writes, “there is no longer a traditional area of exclusive parental or family decision-making.”
Although the CRC has not been ratified by the United States, our own courts have nevertheless begun to allow children to actively assert their “right to be heard.” The Florida State Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that a fifteen-year-old boy in foster care was entitled to a judicial hearing and a lawyer to contest his placement in a mental health institution. It makes sense to grant such a right to a fifteen-year-old who does not have parents and is in the custody of the state, but in 2003, the Florida court extended its ruling to say that children in foster care were entitled to legal hearings and appointment of a lawyer, in order to give the child a “meaningful opportunity to be heard.” Although the court did not say “all children,” it seems reasonable to infer that this legal standard could be applied to children well under fifteen years old.
The result of this and similar rulings has been children - some far younger than fifteen - who are successfully suing their own parents under the direction of a relative or government worker. As recently as June 2007, a nine-year-old boy in Minnesota sued both his parents through a government-appointed guardian ad litem and won $100,000 from their insurance company for injuries due to the “faulty installation” of his car seat. Children and even infants in states like Kansas, Florida, and New Hampshire have also successfully sued their parents for being involved in automobile accidents, being hit by a car in a parking lot, and even for prenatal injuries suffered when the mother was hit by an oncoming vehicle because she did not use a crosswalk.
Children in Harm’s Way
These cases illustrate the danger that “right to be heard” poses to children, especially to infants and young children, who are often completely unaware of what they are doing when they “sue” a parent. According to Dr. Martin Guggenheim, Professor of Law at New York University and President of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR), the modern “children’s rights movement” encourages litigation to enforce children’s rights, but fails to recognize that such litigation is “used more often than not as an opportunity to ‘take it to the judge,’” rather than to protect children. Thus, “more children are enmeshed in legal proceedings than would have been imaginable a generation ago,” as adults seek to invoke their children’s rights to “gain the upper hand” against an ex-wife, corporation, or auto insurance company.
The danger of Article 12 is that it grants the government broad, discretionary legal authority, to protect the child’s nebulous “right to be heard” at all times when the child’s interests are involved. Thankfully, our courts have not yet adopted this philosophy in “all matters affecting the child,” but if the CRC is ratified or imposed on the United States through customary international law, that will change.
America’s experience has opened parents up to extensive litigation, while often using the child’s “interests” as a way to claim a sort of “moral high ground” in disputes that are really between adults. When the bonds between children and their families are tried in the fires of litigation, they are often scorched in the process. Whenever we empower the government to be the arbiter, we are risking the welfare of our children and families.
Please forward this message onto your friends and urge them to sign the Petition to Protect parental rights at http://www.parentalrights.org/petition.
hrscowboy
03-10-08, 08:11 PM
Havent we been thru this thread before?? Aww yes the taking of children away from there parents because the parents screwed up big time..
Going through the last 500 threads, this is the only one adressing this. It goes way beyond parents screwing up big time. This is about the parents loosing there rights to be parents. Letting the kids and the appointed care takers ( who's only interest is advancing the given agenda, not in your child) run the show, decide what is best. If you don't comply you will loose your child. Germany is a prime example.
It is very important that topics such as this get raised now, before the election. Who is the party that thinks we need to comit more to the U.N and behave like Europe? The dems. We are in danger of loosing more of the few freedoms we have left.
You teach your children how to shoot so they can defend themselfs, the live stock, and put food on the table. The powers that be say that is a harmfull or dangerous condition for YOUR children and they come get them.
You teach your children that Christianity and belief in Jesus is the only true way to heaven(the charter doesn't limit to just one, but teaching only one. can be muslim or hidu). The powers that be say this is intolerant and teaching YOUR children hatred and intolerance and they take them from you.
How is this "parents screwing up big time"?
Part I of an In-depth Look at Article 13 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
This week, we continue our series (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/tag/convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child) on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm) by considering Article 13, which states that “the child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.”
The crux of this article is the child’s “right to information.” Children access information through what they are taught and what they discover on their own. This week, we will consider the Convention’s implications on what children are taught.
Homeschooling
Article 13 is far more sweeping than any right articulated by our Constitution or Supreme Court, guaranteeing all children the right to seek information of all kinds. International author and commentator Marian Koren explains that although the state should generally refrain from interfering in the family, “the State also has a positive obligation in supporting the possibilities for children to seek information or to express their views.” Ultimately, “it is the duty of the State to respect the rights of the child and his freedom to thought, conscience, belief, expression and opinion.” (emphasis in original)
Although the United States has not yet ratified the CRC, there is a growing sentiment that the state should bear the responsibility for ensuring that children are “properly educated,” instead of parents. A striking example occurred this past February, when a California court declared in In Re Rachel L. that “parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” unless they are certified by the state to teach. In so ruling, the court declined to follow the Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Wisconsin v. Yoder and its 2000 ruling in Troxel v. Granville, which guarantee parents the fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children.
Whose Responsibility?
Rachel L., like Article 13, presumes that it is ultimately the state’s duty to ensure that the child’s right to information is respected. The California court quoted repeatedly from an earlier California decision in 1952, which concluded that children must be educated in traditional public or private schools, subject to state standards and regulations: anything less would “take from the state all-efficient authority to regulate the education of the prospective voting population.” (emphasis added)
The language of “all-efficient authority” is not the language of liberty. According to Dr. Martin Guggenheim (http://books.google.com/books?id=4t8asPP4B1AC), Professor of Law at New York University, “our future as a democracy depends on nurturing diversity of minds. The legal system’s insistence on private ordering of familial life ultimately guards against state control of its citizens.” There may be questions over the “best way” to educate children, but according to Guggenheim, the American answer is that “unless the answers are so clear that there is no room to disagree, parents are free to decide for themselves what they believe will best serve their children.”
Thankfully, the public outcry to this decision led California courts to decide to rehear the Rachel L. decision this summer, allowing parents - at least for the moment - to continue teaching their children at home. But only time will tell whether the California courts will have a change of heart, or whether the damaging decision will simply be repeated. The strong words of the first Rachel L. decision suggest that this is a real possibility.
America’s legal heritage has consistently held that parents, not the state, have the right to decide whether their children would best benefit from public schooling, a private school, or even learning at home, but this recent decision from California highlights just how tenuous this freedom can be. If we wish to secure these freedoms, we must act now to place parental rights beyond the reach of judges by protecting them within the Constitution.
Part II of an In-depth Look at Article 13 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
In an age where information is becoming easier to access every day, children face new and uncharted risks. Our American heritage has long honored the right of parents to direct their child’s access to information, recognizing that in the vast majority of circumstances, parents are best situated to monitor their child’s activities and to provide necessary guidance during the transition from childhood to adulthood. Unfortunately, this vital role is being undermined by the rising tide of international thought, far removed from our own tradition and championed by international agreements like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
Last week, we began our discussion of Article 13 of the UNCRC by looking at its impact on what children are taught (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/courts-the-law/homeschooling-illegal). This week, we return to Article 13 to examine the right of the child “to seek information,” and the impact this guarantee has on the relationship between children, their parents, and the state.
Article 13 is divided into two sections. The first states that “The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.” The remainder of the article clarifies that this right be restricted, but these restrictions must be provided by law and necessary to “respect the rights or reputations of others” or for “the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals.”
This article focuses on the implications of a child’s “right to information.” Although our Constitution does not expressly grant such a right, there is a growing trend – both within our boarders and abroad – to grant children such rights.
Setting Children Free
Article 13 begins by guaranteeing to all children the right to seek, receive and impart all kinds of information and ideas. Although some proponents of the Convention allege that article 13 is particularly important for children who are seeking to discover more of their identities after spending years of their lives in the care of the state, there is nothing in the text which limits this provision to such a narrow meaning.
According to advocates of the CRC, such as Marian Koren, international author for the UN at the Hague, a more acceptable interpretation of article 13 would require the government to establish and support a whole host of government programs aimed at educating children, such as “advice and information services for children, free access to libraries and loans, workshops for children on topics of their interest,” and so on. According to law professor Bruce Hafen, such a “right” is a broad departure from current US law, and not only poses difficulties for parents, but also for schools, teachers, and educational administrators who have to make difficult decisions about what they teach the children entrusted to their care.
No Thank You, Mom and Dad
While article 13 allows the right of information to be restrained in order to “respect the rights or reputations of others,” this respect does not extend to the decisions of parents. As Koren writes, whenever the state feels that parents are “failing” to protect their child’s rights, “it is the duty of the state to control parents to take their responsibilities and to fulfill their tasks towards their children.”
American law has long recognized the importance of parents in guiding their children to make good decisions. In 1979, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Parham v. J.R. that “most children, even in adolescence, simply are not able to make sound judgments concerning many decisions, including their need for medical care or treatment. Parents can and must make those judgments.”
The UNCRC shifts this recognized balance in favor of increased autonomy for the child. According to Barbara Nauck, writing in the Cleveland State Law Review, “the more assertive language of Article 13 presumably means that Article 13 would prevail where there is a conflict between the child’s desire to freely express herself and the parent’s interest in curbing that expression.” Given the arguments advanced by many of today’s child advocates, “the interpretation of the Convention that will be argued in the courts is that the parent may act as counselor, suggesting the pros and cons and possible consequences, but the final choice would be in the hands of the child.” (emphasis added)
Our Children in Harm’s Way
It does not take a parent long to imagine the Pandora’s box that would be unleashed if the final choice is placed in the hands of the child. With television and the internet opening up an almost infinite number of avenues for children to seek information, it is more important than ever for parents to have the freedom to guide their children through the journey to adulthood. Article 13, and the autonomous ideology that it perpetuates, undermines these vital efforts.
Please forward this message onto your friends and urge them to sign the Petition to Protect Parental Rights (http://www.parentalrights.org/petition).
Sources
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm)
Marian Koren, “The Right to Information: Too Vague to Be True?” in Monitoring Children’s Rights, Eugeen Verhellen, ed. (The Hague, 1996): 675.
Bruce & Jonathan Hafen, “Abandoning Children to Their Autonomy: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Harvard International Law Review (1996): 468
Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584 (1979): 603.
Barbara J. Nauck, “Implications of the United States Ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Civil Rights, the Constitution and the Family,” Cleveland State Law Review (1994): 693.
Richard G. Wilkins, “Why the United States Should not Ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Saint Louis University Law Review (2003): 420-421.
Religion is Child Abuse? (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/uncrc/religion-is-child-abuse)
Posted by: admin (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/author/admin/) on May 5th, 2008
Tag(s): Convention on the Rights of the Child (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/tag/convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child) • CRC (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/tag/crc) • parental rights (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/tag/parental-rights)
An In-Depth Look at Article 14 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
This week, we continue our series on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/uncrc/no-thank-you-mom-and-dad) with Article 14 (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm), which says that the government shall “respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion,” and shall also “respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child.”
Proponents of the CRC, such as law professor Jonathan Todres, has commented that Article 14 “provides for the role of parents in teaching religion to their children, while ensuring that the government does not impose restrictions on any child’s right to freedom of religion.” Nevertheless, a deeper understanding of this provision reveals that the purportedly “pro-parent” language is really another avenue for government power, not a shield to protect parental rights.
How much “direction” is too much direction?
On its face, this article may seem to support the role of parents, but such a position is merely wishful thinking. The Convention merely recognizes the parents’ primary role to “provide direction” to the child, and there is considerable disagreement on what this “direction” should entail. For example, according to Faulkner University law professor John Garman (http://valpolawreview.org/content/archives/vol41/no2_win2007/Garman_Final.pdf), Article 14 is one of the few clauses in the CRC that “actually brings the parents into play to ‘provide direction to the child.’”
But another CRC proponent, law professor Cynthia Price Cohen, disagrees. According to Cohen, one of the earliest drafts of Article 14 included “two paragraphs that protected the right of parents to guide the exercise of this right and to ‘respect the liberty of the child and his parents’ with regard to the child’s religious education.” When the final text was adopted, however, all language protecting the rights of parents to “ensure the religious and moral education of the child” was omitted. This omission makes no sense if the purpose of Article 14 was to protect the rights of parents to instruct their children.
Religious “indoctrination” as abuse?
The danger to parents is compounded by a growing movement among American and international academics to prevent parents from “indoctrinating” their children with religious beliefs. For example, British scientist and bestselling author Richard Dawkins (http://richarddawkins.net/article,118,Religions-Real-Child-Abuse,Richard-Dawkins) recently described religious “indoctrination” of young children as a form of child abuse. “Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is,” Dawkins writes, “I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first place.”
Dawkins is not alone in his analysis. In 1998, bestselling author and professor of psychology Nicholas Humphrey (http://www.humphrey.org.uk/papers/1998WhatShallWeTell.pdf), teaching at New York University at the time, argued for “censorship” of parents, who have “no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.”
Both authors advocate an outside solution to “protect” children from indoctrination: intervention by the government. In The God Delusion, Dawkins quotes from Humphrey, who writes that “children have a right not to have their minds addled by nonsense, and we as a society have a duty to protect them from it.” Humphrey bluntly adds that “parents’ rights have no status in ethics and should have none in law” – parenting is a “privilege” that operates within parameters set by society to protect the child’s “fundamental rights to self determination.” If parents step beyond these boundaries by indoctrinating their children, “the contract lapses – and it is then the duty of those who granted the privilege to intervene.” (emphasis added)
Some have called for international talks on whether children should be involved in religion. Innaiah Narisetti (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jun/07061805.html) of the Center for Inquiry (a U.N. NGO) said, “The time has come to debate the participation of children in religious institutions,” continues Narisetti. “While some might see it as a matter better left to parents, the negative influence of religion and its subsequent contribution to child abuse from religious beliefs and practices requires us to ask whether organized religion is an institution that needs limits set on how early it should have access to children.” Narisetti also said that “The UN must then take a clear stand on the issue of the forced involvement of children in religious practices; it must speak up for the rights of children and not the automatic right of parents and societies to pass on religious beliefs, and it must reexamine whether an organization like the Vatican should belong to the UN”
The “fundamental interest of parents”
This aggressive censorship of parents captures the true spirit of Article 14. According to law professor Bruce Hafen, the language of Article 14 views “parents as trustees of the state who have only such authority and discretion as the state may grant in order to protect the child’s independent rights,” and is consistent with what the state deems as the child’s “evolving capacities.” Such a calloused view of parents stands in stark contrast to our own legal tradition, which has long upheld “the fundamental interest of parents, as contrasted with that of the State, to guide the religious future and education of their children.”
America’s legal heritage has consistently held that parents have a fundamental right to teach their children about religion, shielded from well-intentioned but intrusive interference from the state. The danger of Article 14 is that it disrupts this crucial balance, tipping the scales in favor of the government and those who claim to “know better” in our society. If we wish to secure these freedoms, we must act now to place parental rights into the text of our Constitution.
Please forward this message onto your friends and urge them to sign the Petition to Protect Parental Rights (http://www.parentalrights.org/petition).
Additional sources not linked in the article
Jonathan Todres, “Analyzing the Opposition to the U.S. Ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child,” in The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (2006): 24.
Cynthia Price Cohen, “Role of the United States in Drafting the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Loyola Poverty Law Journal (1998): 30-31.
Bruce Hafen, “Abandoning Children to their Autonomy,” Harvard International Law Journal (1996): 470.
Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 232 (1972).
Privacy From Parents (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/uncrc/privacy-from-parents)
Posted by: admin (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/author/admin/) on May 12th, 2008
Tag(s): Convention on the Rights of the Child (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/tag/convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child) • CRC (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/tag/crc) • international law (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/tag/international-law) • parental rights (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/tag/parental-rights) • privacy (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/tag/privacy) • UNCRC (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/tag/uncrc)
An In-depth Look at Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
During our e-mail series (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/uncrc/religion-is-child-abuse) on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm), a constant theme has been the recurring intervention of government power in the relationship between children and their parents. Broad discretion for the state is particularly prevalent in the Convention’s “freedom” provisions, which guarantee choices to children when it comes to expression, information, religion, and association.
Perhaps the most troubling of these “freedom” provisions is article 16, which stipulates that “no child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence.” More so than any other section of the Convention, article 16 invokes the power of the government in ways previously unseen and untested in America’s legal and political history.
Paradigm Shift
The key to understanding article 16 is found in its absolute language: no child is to have his or her right to privacy violated. According to American law professor Cynthia Price Cohen, article 16 “uses the strongest obligatory language in the human rights lexicon to protect the child’s privacy rights.”
This is a strong break from American law. According to Catherine Ross, writing in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the concept of a “right to privacy” has been used within the American context to support limited reproductive freedom for children, including the right to receive information, counseling, and contraceptives without parental consent or notification. But even in such cases, the Supreme Court has attempted to draw some sort of balance between the privacy rights of the child and the role of parents in raising and directing their children: never has the Court stated that children have an absolute right to privacy even from their parents.
Displacing Parents
In contrast, the “right to privacy (http://www.parentalrights.org/blog/tag/privacy)” within the Convention is far broader than anything contemplated in American law or jurisprudence, bestowing an absolute right to privacy which, according to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in their 2004 report on Japan, includes privacy in “personal correspondence and searching of personal affects.” This includes more than just a child’s diary or letters to a pen pal: it includes e-mails composed, websites visited, and a growing plethora of other means of communication with the outside world.
Law professor Bruce Hafen notes that this strong language makes little allowance for the role of adults who are unavoidably involved in a child’s private world – namely, the child’s parents. Scholar Barbara Nauck adds that when the responsibility of parents to “guide and direct” their children comes into conflict with the right of children to have privacy, it is highly questionable whether parents will have the lawful authority to interfere with the child’s privacy.
Only the First Step
On this basis alone, law professor Richard Wilkins has warned that article 16 has the potential to place the basic ability to discipline and monitor children – activities necessary for effective parenting – into serious doubt. In addition, the provision’s absolute guarantees could also be extended through state laws or the decisions of judges to include other “rights” guaranteed by the Convention – such as the freedom of religion, expression, or information – with devastating consequences to the authority and effectiveness of parents. It is the absolute, all-encompassing nature of article 16 that poses the real danger to both children and parents.
Please forward this message on to your friends and urge them to sign the Petition to Protect Parental Rights at http://www.parentalrights.org/petition.
Sources
Cynthia Price Cohen, The Role of the United States in Drafting the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1998): 34.
Catherine Ross, An Emerging Right for Mature Minors to Receive Information (1999): 261.
UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Concluding Observations: Japan, CRC/C/15/Add.231 (2004)
Bruce Hafen and Jonathan Hafen, Abandoning Children to their Autonomy (1996): 472.
Barbara Nauck, Implications of the United States Ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1994): 700.
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