According to a recently published report from the United States Committee for UNICEF, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has been ratified by 191 countries. "The remaining two countries which have not ratified the Convention are Somalia and the United States," the document observed. Since Somalia has descended into Hobbesian anarchy, the United States is the only nation with a functioning government to withhold ratification of the Convention.
Who is to blame for this "scandalous" state of affairs? The UNICEF Committee's report insists that ratification has been withheld on account of "an epidemic of misconceptions about its intent and content" that has been spread by a handful of "right-wing extremists" bent on poisoning the political wells: "Conservative organizations including the Christian Coalition, Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the John Birch Society, the National Center for Home Education, and the Rutherford Institute have spearheaded the efforts in opposition to the Convention. These organizations have made a significant effort to portray the Convention as a threat ... to national sovereignty, states' rights, and the parent-child relationship."
A "fact sheet" distributed at the recent "Second World Congress on Family Law and the Rights of Children and Youth" in San Francisco (Children's Rights Congress) accuses conservative groups of disseminating "misleading, unnecessarily inflammatory or unfounded information about the substance and intent of the Convention...." The same accusation was retailed in an essay in the Fall 1996 issue of Transnational Law and Contemporary Politics, which lamented that "the Convention faces extremely well-organized and vociferous political opposition in the United States [from] conservative organizations [who] have expressed strong opposition to the Convention and are mounting a well-coordinated political attack on it with the intention of blocking U.S. ratification." The essay accused opponents of the Convention of "polarizing the American public" and haughtily asserted that "the opposition does not speak for a consensus of the American people."
A common rhetorical theme of the Convention's supporters is that only irrational right-wing ideologues could construe the treaty as a threat to parental rights, constitutional order, and national sovereignty. However, a close reading of both the Convention and the pronouncements of its supporters will illustrate that its critics understand and appreciate both the intent and the substance of that treaty only too well.
Compelling Force
Speaking at the Children's Rights Congress, Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Jose Ramos-Horta of East Timor observed that the Children's Rights Convention "challenges the dichotomy between the privacy of the family and the public domain of the State and its instrumentalities. The Convention disaggregates the rights of childrenfrom the rights of families and constitutes children as independent actors with rights and with respect to both parents and with respect to the State." (Emphasis added.)
In simpler language, Dr. Horta's conclusion agrees with that of the Convention's critics in America: The Convention is intended to emancipate children from parental authority within the home, and invests them with "rights" that can be enforced against their parents.
The parental role, as defined by the Convention, is that of "guaranteeing and promoting the rights set forth in this Convention" and of bringing up their children "in the spirit of the ideals enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations." The document also instructs ratifying governments to "render appropriate assistance to parents" in these endeavors -- an open-ended mandate for government intervention in the home. Furthermore, it must be remembered that governments do not "assist" -- they compel; hence, the Convention would require, in principle, that ratifying governments compel parents to bring up their children in accordance with the UN's guidelines.
The UN's International Year of the Family (IYF) program, which co-sponsored the Children's Rights Congress, insists that the family must be reconstituted as "the smallest democracy at the heart of society." In keeping with that theme, UNICEF explains that "rather than creating conflict between the rights of parents and the rights of children, the Convention encourages an atmosphere conducive to dialogue and mutual respect."
How might this work in practice? Under the Convention, if a child decides he has a "right" to join a street gang or religious cult, for example, the parent's role would be to engage in "dialogue," rather than exercising parental authority in ways that inhibit the child's "freedom of association" or "freedom of religion." In the secular egalitarian order which the Convention seeks to create, parents and children would be equal before the state -- a radical departure from the biblical worldview in which children are required to honor and obey their parents to the extent that the parents honor and obey God.
The Convention would also forbid parents to employ biblically mandated physical discipline. UNICEF explains that the Convention "makes it clear that children shall be protected from all forms of mental or physical violence or maltreatment. Thus, any forms of discipline involving such violence are unacceptable."
Most ominously, the Convention would establish the legal framework for the seizure of children from parents who use their authority in an "undemocratic" fashion or who practice spanking or other "unacceptable" means of discipline. Article 9 of the document dictates that "a child shall not be separated from his or her parents" unless "competent legal authorities subject to judicial review determine ... that such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child." When read in light of what it would empower government to do, this passage is revealed to be a license for the state to snatch children at whim. After all, what government, no matter how corrupt or incompetent, would not see its own actions as being in "the best interest of the child"?
"Geopolitical Social Contract"
Would the Convention, as its critics claim, constitute a threat to national sovereignty and America's constitutional order? The answer is an emphatic "yes."
UNICEF's The State of the World's Children 1997 report specifies, "Once a country ratifies [the Convention], it is obliged in law to undertake all appropriate measures to assist parents and other responsible parties in fulfilling their obligations under the Convention.... Fulfilling their obligations sometimes requires States to make fundamental changes in national laws, institutions, plans, policies and practices to bring them into line with the principles of the Convention."
In other words, just as unconstitutional federal "mandates" are used to dictate policies to the states, the Convention requires ratifying national governments to enforce UN standards within their nations, even if this requires "fundamental changes" in their political systems. And what are some of those treaty-mandated standards? They include free education, child care, health care, family planning services, etc. "to the maximum extent of [the nation's] available resources." In the case of the United States, those "fundamental changes" would include the destruction of America's constitutional system.
The U.S. Constitution does not authorize the central government to play any role in child or family policy. To the extent that government at any level has such a role, it falls within the rights reserved to the people and to the states by the Tenth Amendment; in short, it is a local and state responsibility. However, according to the "fact sheet" distributed at the Children's Rights Congress, "The Convention would prevail over state law in all cases."
Clearly, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is the spearhead of a radical assault on parental rights, national sovereignty, and the U.S. Constitution. However, according to UN adviser Eugene Verhellen, who is director of the Children's Rights Centre at the University of Ghent in Belgium, the Convention is also "a geopolitical, binding social contract" that will advance the Marxist vision of "human rights."
In a workshop at the Children's Rights Congress, Professor Verhellen explained that there have been "two generations of rights." The first generation, embodied in the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution, led to restrictions on the state's interference in the lives of its subjects; this was the generation of "civil and political rights." The second generation began "in 1917, with the revolution in Russia," Verhellen approvingly stated. As a result of that revolution, "economic, social, and cultural rights emerged. By nature, these two generations of rights assume different roles for the state."
Although the Children's Rights treaty contains provisions dealing with civil and political protections, Verhellen notes that the Convention (like all the other UN "human rights" instruments) is a "second generation" human rights instrument in that it expresses "a romantic idea of how the state should take care of us, about how we as an organized state can provide human dignity and live a decent life" -- and is therefore the political offspring of the Soviet revolution.
Ratification of the Convention requires national governments to eschew "incremental" child and family policies in favor of "comprehensive and integrated" policies, continued Verhellen. As one workshop participant noted without a hint of disapproval, a less euphemistic term to describe such "comprehensive" national policies would be "socialist" -- the "womb to the tomb" policies typical of both Scandinavian welfare states and Soviet-style despotisms.
But the Convention embodies another radical principle, according to Verhellen: Parens Patriae, or the "parenthood of the state," a principle whose triumph will result in nothing less than the "deconstruction and the reconstruction of the concept of the family." "By recognizing children as the bearers of rights that the state must protect, the [Convention] makes family relationships more equal," Verhellen explained to THE NEW AMERICAN. "This process will eliminate the hidden inequalities that are found in the older concept of the family." Invoking the UN slogan that the family must be "the smallest democracy at the heart of society," he insisted that "the family in this new society must serve as a kind of mediator, preparing its members to be part of the larger democracy."
The Real Purpose
Perhaps the most powerful indictment of the Convention is provided by a partial roster of ratifying nations. As Dr. Ramos-Horta observed in his address, "Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam are all parties to the Convention." None of the regimes governing those nations has displayed a notable commitment to improving the lives of children. Indeed, as left-wing activist Caroline Moorehead, a supporter of the Convention, recently pointed out, "The Convention on Children is being violated, systematically and contemptuously, and no countries violate it more energetically than those that were quickest to sign. Almost every ill it set out to remedy has grown worse in the years since it was drafted."
This is because the Convention is not intended to protect children, but to enhance the powers of the United Nations. Hillary Clinton, honorary chair of the Children's Rights Congress, claims that "it takes a village" to raise a child. Through the Convention, the new world orderites hope to become the chieftains of a global village in which the UNICEF slogan "Every child is our child" will be realized. It is to the credit of America that it has thus far refused to enlist in this cynical and destructive enterprise.
