Children's right to be in a family: Advocates of a new global charter believe it's time to revive discussions about the `real' rights of children

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 24, 2001 | by Cheryl Wetzstein

Most nations of the world believe the question of children's rights was answered with a U.N. treaty that asserts children should be protected from harm and exploitation and benefit from adequate standards of living and an education. The U.N. treaty "is a fact of life," says Marjorie Newman-Williams, director of communications for UNICEF. Most countries have ratified it and many have gone ahead to write legislation to enforce it. "So in many minds, we've moved past the discussion of what are rights and moved on to what are we going to do about them," she adds.

But participants at the World Congress of Families recently presented an alternative list of rights, claiming the U.N. treaty misses "larger truths." Children need a mother, a father, a home built on marriage, siblings, religion and a healthy community, says Allan Carlson, president of the Howard Center for Family Religion and Society, who presented a new 10-point Charter of Rights for children at the meeting.

The idea of children's rights was endorsed first by the League of Nations in 1924. But more than half-a-century passed before Poland made a formal proposal to the United Nations in 1978. A working group representing different nations, cultures and religions met annually from 1979 to 1989 to determine what constituted children's rights. The diversity of the group made reaching a consensus an "excruciating process," recalls Newman-Williams, who attended many of the sessions.

The result, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), declares that all children have a right to survive; to have a name, parents, family ties and an adequate standard of living; an education; and to be protected from harm and exploitation. The CRC also asserts that children have the right to obtain information, express their opinions, play, meet, share views with others and enjoy freedom of conscience and religion.

To date, 191 nations have signed or ratified the CRC. The United States is a holdout--it signed the CRC in 1995, but has not ratified it. (Somalia is the only other nation not to join the treaty.) Nevertheless, American religious, labor and children's-advocacy groups give widespread support to the CRC. Amnesty International, for instance, holds that it's essential to protect children against violence, abuse, hazardous employment, exploitation, abduction or sale. The Baptist World Alliance has issued a booklet urging all faithful Christians to support providential human-rights instruments such as the CRC.

Opponents of the treaty believe it overemphasizes children's individual rights, placing them in conflict with U.S. constitutional laws and parental rights. The CRC "comes with the assumption that rights emanate from the government," says Wendy Wright, a spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, a sponsor of the World Congress of Families. "That is in contradiction with the United States' form of government, where we see our rights emanating from God."

"Parents are the people who know their children the best and love them the most and ought to be and rightfully are the primary decisionmakers for children," says Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council and another sponsor of the meeting. "When children are treated as little adults, they are vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation by big adults."

Carlson of the Howard Center says he wrote his alternative list of children's rights after pondering the CRC. "There are good and decent things that the CRC is trying to accomplish," he explains, but it "misses the larger truths about children and their needs."

What children really need, he emphasizes, are a mother, a father, a home built on marriage, brothers and sisters, ancestors or older generations, religious faith, a healthy community, innocence until adulthood and tradition. These rights "grow out of our human nature," which is "to be in families." They are supported by research that shows that children do better when they have a healthy and loving family, religion and community.

Carlson's list sets many desirable goals, but Newman-Williams doesn't believe they can be legislated. "Each child has a right to a home based in marriage, again an extremely desirable goal, but how would you legally enforce it?" she asks. "If a woman is in an abusive relationship, are you going to say she's stuck with it because the child has a right to a home built on marriage? Or if the mother walks away or dies of HIV-AIDS, how will you enforce a child's right to have a mother?"

The Rev. Tony Cupit of the Baptist World Alliance agrees that Carlson's list "is all very well in theory, but in practice it's very much a Western perspective, I think." The right to have siblings, for instance, "is very challengeable" considering that overpopulation is a primary concern of some countries.

At any rate, "everyone will benefit from a healthy and robust discussion" about children, families and rights, concludes Connor. The debate will continue next year at a U.N. special session on children, postponed after the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.