SMA Policy Committee: press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Society for Medical Anthropology
Arlington, Virginia
April 1, 2006
Contact: Cindy Dell Clark, cdc9@psu.edu, (610) 892-1265
Please send comments by March 31, 2006.
Public Policy: The Rights of Children
The UN General Assembly’s Convention on the Rights of the Child asks us to nurture and protect children, and provides specific guidelines for doing so. The United States signed the Convention over ten years ago—and still has not ratified the agreement. Children continue to be maltreated, exploited, deprived, abandoned, and neglected. A Summit for the Convention on the Rights of the Child, meant to mobilize efforts for US ratification and to further educate people about the Convention, will be held May 18-20, 2006 at the American University in Washington, DC. The American Anthropological Association’s 1,300-member Society for Medical Anthropology fully endorses ratification.
Children are especially vulnerable in conditions of armed conflict or economic deprivation. War tears children from their families, to be held in captivity, to be pressed into military or violent sexual service, and to be maimed or killed. War and poverty alike reduce children’s access to medical care, food, and water. Illness, malnutrition, and premature death are harbored when children lack these most basic protections.
Can we do anything to change the situation? The UN General Assembly’s Convention on the Rights of the Child demands that children have such basic rights as food, shelter, and water, and requires that we assist children first in times of disaster. The Convention has been ratified by 192 of 194 countries. This wide international support reflects world-wide commitment, unified across diverse cultural groups, to ensure children their human rights.
The US is one of only two countries (the other is Somalia) not to have ratified the Convention. Although the US helped to shape the provisions of the Convention, and signed the Convention on February 16, 1995, the treaty has still not been submitted to the US Senate for a vote on ratification. Calls for the US to bring about Senate ratification have been made by the American Academy of Pediatrics, former President Jimmy Carter, the Youth Advocate Program International, and various scholars of children’s rights. The Society for Medical Anthropology now also calls for Senate ratification.
The US has become a distinct impediment to the global recognition of children’s rights, through its failure to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This policy undercuts recognition of children’s rights broadly endorsed by diverse nations, and eliminates the opportunity to participate in monitoring and improving standards. At issue is the fundamental vulnerability of all humans at the start of their lives, a concern universally shared by nations and cultures.
No human group that takes too lightly the well being of its children and the moral status of their care can flourish indefinitely across generations. An early spokeswoman for children among anthropologists, Margaret Mead, once stated that “the solution to adult problems depends in large measure upon how children grow up today.” The Society for Medical Anthropology follows Margaret Mead’s lead and calls for the US to ratify the Convention.