“At every stage of life, there is no greater resource and refuge for a child than the love of a parent. Time and time again, studies have found and affirmed that the nurture and love of parents plays a crucial role in positively shaping the future of their children.”
—parentalrights.org
The rights of parents to raise and protect their children have been a long standing tradition around the world and in American history. That right is now being threatened! An international attitude of preferring the state over the parent is becoming more pervasive and alarming as more and more activists in the international community seek to transform parental rights into parental responsibilities and then assume it is the right of government to enforce those responsibilities over parent’s wishes. This concept has manifested itself into an international treaty called the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC).
Regardless of how well intentioned government may be, it can never replace the love and nurture of a parent in the life of a child.
What Are Children’s Rights?
Almost all jurisdictions recognize basic rights for children. Children have a right to have food, shelter, receive education, etc. Legal rights also include the right not to be physically, sexually or emotionally abused. These rights are afforded to all human beings regardless of age. And, no one would deny them.
The concern arises when “moral theory” becomes binding law directed by an international treaty. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was adopted at the UN in 1989. All but two member nations have ratified the treaty – one being the United States.
The CRC is a treaty that mandates a broad range of rights to children, based on the right to have their “best interests” be “a primary consideration” in every aspect of life; the ‘inherent right to life’ (Article 6), and the right of a child “who is capable of forming his or her own views … to express these views freely in all matters affecting the child” (Article 12) (United Nations 1989).
What the treaty does not recognize is the difference between basic human rights of a child and the philosophical or moral duties of parents. Children do not have the cognitive skills to determine what is in their “best interest”; societies and governments have left that role to the family…until now.
The End of Parental Rights and National Sovereignty in the US?
In the U.S. the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, is one vote away from ratification. If the treaty is ratified, and all signs are it will be, the U.N., with the support of the Obama Administration and the liberal U.S. Congress, will turn the fundamental unit of society – the family, into government regulated child care.
U.N. treaties are overseen by appointed U.N. commissions that take precedence over national and state law. Imagine the U.S. being ruled by international law designed and implemented by non-elected foreign delegates with no possibility of redress!
Commission on the Status of Women: A Battle Against Families
Monday, the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women – 53rd session (CSW) began. For decades, anti-family forces have been at work trying to destroy the family and society as we know it, including motherhood, fatherhood and the family.
United Families is there and poised to monitor the status and suggest changes to the CSW “Agreed Outcome” Document as it makes it way through the process. So far, every indication leads us to believe that the 53rd CSW and the “Agreed Outcome” Document is a ruse for pushing the ratification of two treaties, abortion on demand, and homosexual rights.
The CRC and CEDAW (The Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women) are highlighted throughout the Document as key to achieving human rights for women without regard to the rights of parents, nations, cultures and religious beliefs. The initial draft Document includes language that:
- “Urges Governments, in cooperation with the United Nations system to take the following actions: … b. Ratify without reservations, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, including the Optional Protocols thereto, and the concluding comments of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
The Consequences of the CRC
Michael Farris, president of ParentalRights.org, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association and chancellor of Patrick Henry College has been quoted as saying that the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC, will allow the government to review every major decision a parent makes to decide whether it is in the child’s best interest. Of course, a “child’s best interest” is in context of the individual child, not within the family unit.
The CRC treaty creates very specific rights for every child, including social, religious, cultural, economic, etc. Some of these rights are well-intentioned. For instance, the treaty calls on governments to protect the child from sexual abuse and child slavery. It recognizes that parents or legal guardians “have primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child,” but in the end parents’ decisions can be trumped by government on behalf of “the child’s best interest”; whatever that means.
Possible Consequences to Ratification of the CRC include:
- Every major decision regarding your child will be overseen by your local Child Protective Service Agency through government social workers.
- Parents who require their child to go to church, do certain chores, eat certain foods, tend to younger siblings, etc. can be reported to government authorities by their rebellious children.
- Children will choose what religion they will join and if and when they will attend services.
- Family leisure activities and strictness of chores will be determined by government.
- Nations will be required to spend more on child welfare than on national defense.
- Religious schools and home schooling may be forced to close down.
- Parents will be mandated to keep their children in all sex education classes.
- Children will have the right to all reproductive health services, including abortions, without parental knowledge or consent.
The result of such a law has a real possibility of causing mass confusion on the part of families; children being raised without boundaries and parents will parent with fear of reprisal. Child abuse and neglect will no doubt escalate. Orphanages will re-emerge to meet the demand for child placements and children will be removed from their homes in record numbers. An already overburdened and failing child welfare system will create a generation of children with mental health problems and juvenile delinquency.
Families are the foundation of society. We must not allow the integrity of the family and parents to be destroyed by senseless government intervention and international laws and norms.
What you Can Do to Stop CRC
Join United Families as we continue our fight to preserve a future for the family.
1. Call your Congressmen and Senators and tell them we do not want the CRC ratified.
2. Email the US representative to the UN Commission of the Status of Women and head of the US delegation(put in subject line attention: Meryl Frank) and tell her we do not want language in the outcome document that mandates the ratification of the CRC or CDAW.
Do it today! Our children and the future of society depend on it.