There are only 2 nations in the world that have not yet ratified the International (UN) Convention for the Rights of the Child (CRC), and one of them is US - the United States of America!
Yes, it is our nation, standing alone in the 'developed' world that is blocking the universal ratification of the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Children
against abuse, torture, prostitution, forced labor, and every other kind of excess.
Iraq and Iran have ratified, as have Saudi Arabia and North Korea. Yemen has ratified the convention, as have the People's Republic of China and Russia. Cuba and Venezuela have ratified it, and so has Libya. Every nation in Africa except Somalia has ratified, and so has every nation in Asia, every nation in Europe, and every nation in South and Central America. Australia and New Zealand have ratified the convention.
Why? The Republicans are blocking it http://www.ipsnews.net/...
Why hasn't the U.S. ratified the CRC? Because there are at leat 34 Republican Senators standing against it. Who are they? Ladies and Gentlemen, if you support the fundamental rights of children, if you want your nation, the United States of America to join the rest of the nations of the world in standing up to protect the rights of children as the rights of all other people in the world are protected, then you must help stand up against these Republicans blocking the CRC treaty.
WE HAVE TO OUT THEM, ladies and gentlemen. THAT IS THE ONLY WAY TO SUCCEED !!!
OK - so please help. Please recommend this diary, and if it doesn't make the recommended list, then please follow it up with your own diary on the same topic.
What do we have to do? WE HAVE TO MAKE A LIST OF THE REPUBLICAN SENATORS WHO OPPOSE THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION FOR THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD.
We have to publish this list in blogs and newspapers all around the nation. We have to shine the spotlight on the Senators, one by one, identifying them by name, calling them out, and letting the people of their States know WHO THEY ARE.
That way, we can help defeat them, and if we don't defeat them, at least we can put pressure on them to declare their active support and willingness to vote to support the United Nations Convention for the Rights of the Child.
The Pope has endorsed this, and so have 193 nations of the world. Will join the cause? Please say yes, recommend, and blog this yourselves. Put this on your facebook site. Make it a priority. PLEASE.
Only you and we can move forward the rights of the children of the world, and thereby help to protect them. Please take some action - please!
http://www.ipsnews.net/...
RIGHTS: U.S., Somalia Still Opt Out of Children's Treaty
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 13 (IPS) - When the U.N. children's agency (UNICEF) commemorates the 20th anniversary of its landmark international treaty protecting the rights of children next week, there will be two countries skipping the celebrations: the United States and Somalia.
"It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land," presidential candidate Barack Obama said last year during his election campaign.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which was adopted unanimously by the United Nations back in 1989, will be 20 years old on Nov. 20.
Described as the world's most rapidly and universally ratified human rights treaty, the Convention has been ratified by 193 states.
But the only two countries that have not ratified the treaty have nothing in common.
"Somalia is understandable," Kul Gautam, a former U.N. assistant secretary-general and ex-UNICEF deputy executive director, told IPS.
It has been a failed state without an effective government for over two decades, he added.
"But the United States does have a functioning government, which claims to be a great champion of human rights in the world. It baffles non-Americans, and even many Americans, as to why the U.S. is reluctant to ratify this Convention," Gautam added.
When he was on the campaign trail last year, President Obama also said it is important that the United States return to its position as a respected global leader and promoter of human rights.
"I will review this and other treaties to ensure that the U.S. resumes its global leadership in human rights," Obama vowed, before being elected president last November.
Meg Gardinier, chair of the Campaign for U.S. Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, told IPS that the United States extensively scrutinizes treaties before taking final steps toward ratification.
This careful review, necessary to ensure compliance with existing law and practice at the federal and state levels, can span decades.
"Concerns, frequently misdirected and misguided, have prevented the U.S. from endorsing a human rights doctrine its democratic principles have influenced," she said.
"The political will required to ratify the CRC must be reinvigorated under President Obama who reminded us that: 'America has carried on because we the people have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears and true to our founding documents,'" she said.
"Our founding documents - namely the U.S. Constitution - shaped the [CRC], the world's most rapidly ratified human rights treaty," she added.
The Convention recognises every child's right to develop physically, mentally and socially to his or her fullest potential, to be protected from abuse, discrimination, exploitation and violence.
The treaty also gives children the right to express their views and to participate in decisions affecting their future, in accordance with the child's evolving capacities.
Asked about the U.S. stance, Gautam told IPS that some opponents of the CRC in the United States have argued that ratification of the CRC would impose "all kinds of terrible obligations that maybe harmful to America and its children and families".
These, he said, range from "how possible U.N. interference might compromise the sovereignty of the U.S. and undermine its constitution; to how the CRC might weaken American families and role of parents in bringing up their children."
Additionally, the opponents have misinterpreted the CRC as possibly bringing about a culture of permissiveness, including abortion on demand, and unrestricted access to pornography; and how it might empower children to sue their parents and disobey their guidance.
"Such concerns are not unique to America. Many groups in other countries have expressed similar fears from time to time," Gautam said.
"But we have now had 20 years of experience in over a hundred countries to judge if such concerns are justified," he added.
In the United States, the ratification of the CRC, like all other international treaties, is in the hands of the Senate.
The former administration of President George W. Bush, which dismissed most international treaties with contempt, had no plans to lobby the Senate for the ratification of CRC.
An Asian diplomat told IPS that despite President Obama's best intentions, he doubts whether CRC ratification will be a priority for a U.S. Senate currently preoccupied with two politically sensitive issues: health care and climate change.
"I was told that Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has a higher priority than the CRC," he added.
CEDAW was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1979. And the United States is the only country in the industrial world which has not ratified the 30-year-old treaty which strives for a world without gender discrimination and protects the rights of women worldwide.
"It's an irony," said the diplomat, "that the CRC remained unratified by the United States despite the fact that UNICEF has always been headed by a U.S. national. It obviously did not help."
The United States signed the CRC in 1995 shortly after the former UNICEF Executive Director Jim Grant died. It was his goal that there would be universal ratification of the CRC by 1995.
At that time, Senator Jesse Helms, the right-wing neo-conservative head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced that he would not accept any further treaties for U.S. ratification - and so the process toward U.S. ratification was halted.
In the eyes of the rest of the world, he said, the failure of the U.S. to ratify the world's most universally embraced human rights treaty, stands out as a strange enigma.
"Now that the Obama administration has committed itself to regain the lost American moral leadership in the world, and to follow a more multilateralist approach, child rights activists not just in America but all over the world, are hopeful that the US will finally ratify this important Convention," he declared.