Newsletter: November 2007
KATHLEEN RAGSDALE, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Council on Infant and Child Health & Welfare Calls for US Ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: According to UNICEF (2006), one-third of the world’s children lack adequate shelter, 31% lack basic sanitation and 21% have no access to clean, protected water. Around the globe, children are forced to bear arms in violent confl icts and engage in pornography and other forms of sex work. Escalating numbers of “street children” suffer abuse by law enforcement authorities, and children are overrepresented among refugees and the homeless. Can we do anything to change the situation? Motivated by the goal of protecting children’s rights, in 1989 the UN General Assembly adopted the “Convention on the Rights of the Child,” which has since been ratifi ed by 192 of 194 countries. The wide international support of the convention refl ects a worldwide commitment, unifi ed across diverse cultural groups, to ensure children’s human rights.
Indeed, the convention has been legally ratified by more member nations of the UN than any other UN human rights treaty. But one major signatory is missing: the US is one of only two countries (the other being Somalia) that has failed to ratify the convention. Although the US helped shape the provisions of the convention, and signed the convention in 1995, the treaty has not been submitted to the US Senate for a vote on ratification more than a decade later. This is no mere oversight but a governmental reluctance to embrace an international rights treaty. Opposition to the convention in the US has sought to protect prior rights (including states’ rights to execute youth under age 18), but in the process undermines a crucial opportunity to support the human rights of children.
The Status of the Convention in the US: Calls for the US to bring about Senate consideration of ratifi cation have been made by the American Academy of Pediatrics, former President Jimmy Carter, the Youth Advocate Program International and Covenant House, among others. Common to pleas for ratification is the assertion that children, because of their vulnerability, are worthy of care and protection. While issues related to the concept of federalism (by whichstates rather than federal authorities hold jurisdiction over such affairs as education and juvenile justice) may, in theory, interfere with US ratifi cation, other countries with federalist systems have ratifi ed the convention (including Brazil, Germany and Mexico). Unlike many of its global partners, the US has opposed bans on children under 18 serving as soldiers in armed confl icts, and several US states not only sanction lifelong imprisonment for minors but seek to reserve the option of capital punishment for minors—practices at odds with globally sanctioned children’s rights. Then again, Liberia, Sudan, Uganda, Afghanistan, Burma and Sri Lanka have ratifi ed the convention, although these countries have been sites of government or rebel use of child soldiers.
Why the US Should Ratify the Convention: Signatories to the convention have established a globe-spanning consensus on the signifi - cance of children’s human rights. Through the convention’s articles, children are granted the right to have their “best interests” as the prime consideration in their treatment, a goal that is consistent with the broadest of human obligations. The SMA calls for initiation of the signatory process within the US, given that the US is an infl uential global power whose ratifi cation of the convention would support and help activate programs to reduce poverty and provide health and education for all children.
An early spokeswoman for children among anthropologists, Margaret Mead stated, “The solution to adult problems depends in large measure upon how children grow up today.” Yet the US has become a distinct impediment to the global recognition of children’s rights through its failure to ratify the convention more than a decade after it was adopted by the UN. Out of an ethical responsibility to make public its support for humane public policies, the SMA calls for Senate submission and approval of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This article is excerpted and adapted from the original SMA Policy Committee: Public Policy Statement developed and prepared by the CICH Policy Statement Task Force Subcommittee, whose members include Cindy Dell Clark (chair), María Claudia Duque Páramo, David Rosen, and E J Sobo (ex officio). For the full policy statement, see: www. medanthro.net/stand/childrights/index.html.
Please send contributions to the SMA Contributing Editor, Kathleen Ragsdale (kathleen.ragsdale@ssrc.
msstate.edu)