There are as many
“expert” opinions on child-rearing as there are experts. But suppose one expert
had the power to decide how all children must be raised.
The UN Convention of the Rights of the Child
makes the State that single expert.
Since 1993 this
convention has been, illegally, the basis of Irish law and policy on children.
It transfers to
the State, however, the primary rights of parents and it grants to children a new
set of “freedoms” that trump the better judgment of parents.
We need to know
what is in this convention if we want to grasp exactly what is at stake in the coming
“children’s rights” referendum.
From the very
beginning of the convention parents are sidelined in favour of the State. The
State is to ensure that children are protected from parents and their beliefs.
The convention
has two over-arching principles: (a) everything must be “in the best interest
of the child” and (b) the State alone decides what is best for any child in any
situation.
Article 9 allows the State, through judical process, to
even confiscate children.
Certainly children
need to be removed from danger, and the Irish Consitution is clear that where
parents fail the State must step in.
But the Convention
allows the State to take a child from good and able parents simply because it
considers the child’s “best interests” lie elsewhere.
In other words,
all parents are subject to State supervision while any action or decision of
the State or its agents is considered automatically to be in the child’s best
interest.
If “best
interest” applied only to the basics of child welfare, how children are fed,
clothed and sheltered, it would be intrusive enough.
But the
“freedoms” created by this Convention put parents on a collision course with
the State.
1. Freedom
of expression
entitles children, to an extent determined by the State, to be part of every
decision affecting them (Art. 12).
This “right”
opens the way for the State to exploit children in order to challenge and even
change the decisions of parents.
2. Freedom
of information gives children
the right to “to seek, receive and impart information and
ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers…through any other media of the
child’s choice” (Art. 12).
This leaves parents helpless to protect
their children from a predatory and profit seeking environment.
It is the State, not parents in their own
homes, which decides any limits on this “right”.
3. The Convention guarantees a child “freedom of thought, conscience and religion”
(Art. 14).
This “freedom” undermines the right of
parents to pass on their religious faith and their moral values to their
children. It could see the State taking action against parents who try to pass
on the faith to their children.
And what happens, for example, if a child
gets involved with a cult?
4. Freedom of association. Responsible parents vet
the people who have access to their children. Yet this convention tells
children they have a right to associate with anyone they choose (Art. 15).
Here again proper
care for their children can get parents into serious trouble.
5. The child’s right to privacy finally and fully displaces parents from their
role as parents, removing them from the “private” world of their children.
This “freedom” bans some of the most
important tasks of responsible parenthood: monitoring and disciplining (Art. 16).
The right to privacy will be familiar to
many for the way it was used to legalise contraception and abortion in other
jurisdictions.
The potential for parents to be excluded
from such key areas of the children’s lives emerges later when the convention directs
the State to develop family
planning services for children!
The Irish Constitution guarantees
responsible parents support without interference. The logic of children’s
rights is interference without support.
Kathy Sinnott, in an important series of articles on the Children's Referendum writes;
