{"id":54797,"date":"2015-03-09T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T12:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=54797"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:26:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:26:00","slug":"u-s-standing-alone-against-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/03\/u-s-standing-alone-against-children\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Standing Alone against Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

USA Will Not Ratify Convention on the Rights of the Child<\/em><\/p>\n

6 Mar 2015 – <\/em>Lawrence Wittner\u00a0points out\u00a0that the United States will soon be the only nation on earth that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.<\/p>\n

And why not? Wittner focuses on general backward stupidness: the treaty would \u201coverride\u201d the Constitution or the importance of families or the rights of parents. He points out the treaty\u2019s support for parents and families and the impossibility of overriding the Constitution \u2014 which we might note in any case says nothing on the subject.<\/p>\n

Then Wittner mentions some more substantive reasons for opposition:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 in fairness to the critics, it must be acknowledged that\u00a0some current American laws<\/a>\u00a0do clash with the Convention\u2019s child protection features. For example, in the United States, children under the age of 18 can be jailed for life, with no possibility of parole. Also, as Human Rights Watch notes, \u201cexemptions in U.S. child labor laws allow children as young as 12 to be put to work in agriculture for long hours and under dangerous conditions.\u201d Moreover, the treaty prohibits cruel and degrading punishment of children\u2015a possible source of challenge to the\u00a0one-third of U.S. states<\/a>\u00a0that still allow corporal punishment in their schools.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s actually a pretty major in-fairness-to-the-critics point. The United States wants to maintain the ability to lock children in cages for the rest of their lives or to work them in the fields or to physically abuse them in school. In fact, the\u00a0child prison industry\u00a0is a major presence in the United States.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s another industry that has a dog in this fight. The U.S. military\u00a0openly\u00a0recruits\u00a0children.<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s not forget that there are children on the drone kill list and children who have been killed with drone strikes.<\/p>\n

There are other nations that engage in some of these same abuses. Is it better to ratify a basic human rights treaty and violate it or to refuse to ratify it because you intend to act against it as a matter of principle?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m inclined to think the latter suggests the further remove from decent tendencies.<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

David Swanson is the author of <\/em>War Is A Lie and <\/em>Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union. He holds a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Virginia and has worked as a newspaper reporter and as a communications director, including press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as communications coordinator for ACORN<\/a>. He blogs at http:\/\/davidswanson.org<\/a> and http:\/\/warisacrime.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 davidswanson.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States will soon be the only nation on earth that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. And why not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}