symposium

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 16, 2001 | by Marian Wright Edelman, | Diane Sabom

Q: Should the Senate ratify the Convention on the Rights o the Child?

Yes: This document will focus resources and energy on the needs of all our nation's children.

The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is a landmark international treaty that sets out a comprehensive vision of the basics that any civilized nation must assure its children.

In what was the quickest and most overwhelming display of support for a treaty in history, more than 190 nations ratified the CRC in the 1990s. The United States, however, neither has signed nor ratified, leaving us extraordinarily isolated in the community of nations:

Of all the nations in NATO, all but the United States have ratified the CRC. Indeed, every nation on Earth except the United States and Somalia -- which has no legally constituted government -- has ratified the CRC.

We should lead, not lag the rest of the world in the care and protection of children and respect for their fundamental human rights. But it is not just in our failure to ratify the CRC that we lag. Our investment in, commitment to and treatment of children lag far behind dozens of other countries. Our children are being left behind the children of other nations. For example: The United States is not among the 23 industrialized countries that provide medical care and financial assistance to all pregnant women. The United States is not among the 23 industrialized countries that ensure or provide basic medical care for all workers and their dependents.

The statistical warning signs are many. American children are more likely to die in the first year of life than children in 22 other countries and are more likely to be born at low birth weight than infants in 16 other nations. Among wealthy Western democracies, the United States ranks within the small handful of countries with the highest poverty rates -- three to four times those of the leaders. U.S. children under age 15 are 12 times more likely to die from gunfire than children in 25 other industrialized countries combined.

Certainly, most of our nation's children are healthy, well-fed, well cared for and secure. But too many children in the United States live in poverty; lack access to health care; suffer abuse, violence or discrimination; have inadequate education; and are hungry and homeless. One in five American babies is born into poverty. One in seven children has no health insurance. For millions the promise of the CRC is an empty one.

U.S. laws more often than not meet the standards of the CRC, but America's treatment of children in practice and the actual implementation of laws and funding of programs leave our children far short of the convention's standards.

U.S. laws and policies often weaken the role of parents and subvert the family. Weak child-support enforcement, the absence of any national policy supporting paid parental leave, inequitable tax treatment for lower-income married parents and other practices make parenting a far harder task than it should be.

While the CRC calls for affirmative steps to ensure prenatal care and primary care for children, one out of six babies in the United States is born to a woman who received no prenatal care in the first trimester.

Eleven million U.S. children have no health insurance. Twelve million U.S. children live in poverty.

A number of states, as well as the federal government, still allow juveniles to be executed for certain crimes, an anachronism and barbarism prohibited by the CRC and other international laws.

Our child-welfare system is overwhelmed, fails to protect children from violence, abuse and neglect, fails to provide services to hold families together and fails to protect children in foster care.

The standards and aspirations of the CRC by and large parallel the standards and aspirations our nation says it has for children. The CRC recognizes that the family is the fundamental group of society, that a child has the right to be cared for by his or her parents without arbitrary interference with the family, that every child must be treated with dignity and fairness and that decisions by adults should be made in the best interests of children. The CRC protects children against want, unnecessary illness and exploitation: Children must be provided the basics in life (food, shelter and clothing) and should enjoy the highest attainable standard of health; children have a right to an education and the development of their talents and abilities to their fullest potential.

The CRC would be a tool to help our nation make unanimous a world vision where all children are protected. That is why our nation joined the unanimous vote for the CRC on the floor of the General Assembly on Nov. 20, 1989. That is why President George H.W Bush attended the 1990 World Summit for Children and the United States made a commitment there to work to promote the earliest possible ratification and implementation of the CRC.

A bipartisan group of 85 House members and 60 senators cosponsored 1990 resolutions urging the president to forward the CRC to the Senate for consideration of ratification. Those resolutions passed both the House and the Senate by voice vote, without dissent.