The Reality of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Imagine an Air Force mom, serving her country on a month-long deployment, who learns that her daughter has been secretly removed by local authorities, claiming the child has been “abandoned.” Children begin mandatory sex-education at the age of four, regardless of their family’s opinions, beliefs, or convictions, and parents are imprisoned if their children fail to receive any of their mandatory vaccinations. Parents live in a state of constant supervision and suspicion.
Imagine if your national government had the audacity to appoint a “guardian” to monitor your child from birth, charged with the legal responsibility to evaluate your decisions as a parent and armed with the legal authority to “intervene, prevent or rectify” any violations of your child’s rights. Public and private schools alike are policed by the national government, and classes begin with singing about the principles of peace, tolerance, and the United Nations. Your child’s confidential medical records, stored in a nation-wide electronic register from birth until age twenty, can be accessed at any time, without your knowledge, by any physician, teacher, or government social worker in the nation.
Now stop imagining, because for parents in the 193 countries that have ratified the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, each of these scenarios is true.
Constant Supervision and Suspicion
Since its adoption by the United Nations in 1989, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has become the most widely accepted international agreement in history, ratified by every nation of the world except for the United States and Somalia. All signatories pledge to protect children’s rights, foster their development, and uphold their best interests by re-writing their national laws to conform to the standards set forth in the treaty.
While all this may sound harmless and even commendable, the reality is that the Convention allows and even demands that national governments interfere in the decisions of individual families and parents. By invoking the “best interests of the child ,” policymakers and government agents have the authority to substitute their own decisions for those of the child or parent. In short, parents lose their rights to be parents, and become merely caregivers. The result, as parents across the globe are now discovering, is that the family is being steadily undermined, often with tragic and devastating results for the very children who are supposed to be protected.
The Need for Vigilance
Thankfully, the United States still remains the sole organized government of the world that has rejected the Convention on the Rights of the Child, because our elected leaders emphatically rejected the Convention’s incursions on American law and the American family. America believes that international committees and courts should have no authority in the affairs of her families, and that the right and responsibility of lawmaking should be wielded only by her own sons and daughters.
This emphatic resistance, however, must be more than simply a one-time stand, for without vigilance on the part of its citizens, America is unlikely to remain the last stalwart defender of parental rights. Nations across the globe are reaffirming their commitment to the Convention every day, and domestic scholars, activists, judges, and politicians continue to urge us to join them.
To challenge their cries, ParentalRights.org will be taking a closer look at countries who have been recently cited by the United Nations as “model-governments” in the battle for children’s rights. Beneath their shiny veneer of success are stories and movements that reveal the dangers taking shape beyond our borders. Americans everywhere need to be informed about the true nature of the international movement for “child rights.” In short, they need to hear the stories of real parents, in real countries, who are becoming the real casualties of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
