Originally published on the CGS blog on December 13, 2013.
One hundred ninety-two member states of the United Nations have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which outlines the social, political, and economic rights of children. It protects their rights to survive; to reach their full potential; and to live with freedom from abuse, neglect, and exploitation.
The only countries who haven’t ratified are South Sudan, Somalia, and the United States. However, two of those three may change that in the near future. The Parliament of South Sudan recently voted to ratify the CRC, while the President of Somalia pledged to do so as well.
Will the U.S. be the final holdout?
Opponents of multilateral treaties often fear that ratification will allow the United Nations to override U.S. domestic law. There are many misconceptions surrounding this idea, largely championed in this case by parental rights groups. ParentalRights.org in particular predicts a variety of nightmare scenarios, from parents being imprisoned for failing to vaccinate their child to children beginning mandatory sex education at age four. In actuality, the CRC emphasizes the importance of the family and merely specifies rights that most parents would want for their child – the right to education, development, and protection from exploitation and abuse. The treaty has helped governments evaluate and improve their laws and policies for children. None of the aforementioned scenarios have come to pass in the 192 states that have ratified the convention.
However, there are some ways ratification could affect U.S. law. The treaty prohibits sentencing juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole, a practice the United States is alone in continuing. The death penalty—which among developed nations currently is utilized only by the U.S.— was not declared illegal to apply to children until 2005.
We are naturally inclined to defend our country, believing it to set the standards to which other states should aspire. In some ways, this is true. But the U.S. is distinguished among its developed country peers by its high rates of violence against children, child poverty, and infant mortality. Additionally, 400,000 children are engaged in dangerous agricultural work every day on American soil, while immigration enforcement measures needlessly separate nearly 150,000 children from their parents every year.
Clearly we’re not doing so well, children-wise. Unlike the conflict-ridden South Sudan and the weakly governed Somalia, the United States has no excuse for not ratifying the CRC. All that appears to be holding us back is myths about U.N. control and backwards policies like life without parole for juveniles that every other country has had the good sense to abandon. The U.S. claims to be a leader in human rights, but things like this make us in some respects one of the least civilized countries in the world.
