In February, Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) introduced a resolution, House Resolution 854to call on the US Senate to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (the Convention, or CRC). In doing so, she once again opened the door – or at least knocked on it – for international law to trump parental rights in our country.
On November 20, 1989, the United Nations General Assembly approved the CRC and opened it for ratification. Within ten months, the required 20 nations had adopted the treaty, putting it into effect. Since then, all countries except the United States have ratified the CRC.
The United States signed the treaty under President Bill Clinton in 1995, signaling our intention to become a party. But it was never ratified with the constitutionally required consent of two-thirds of the Senate, as required by our Constitution, so we remain the only recalcitrant.
But there are three good reasons why we cannot, we duty not, join the Convention.
Treaty provisions: “best interests” standard
The first reason why we should not ratify the CRC is the content of the treaty itself. Although at first glance it appears to be a set of well-meaning aspirations aimed at bringing freedom and security to children around the world, the CRC contains “poison pills” that we must not accept.
The worst of these is a provision which states that “in all matters relating to children, the best interests of the child shall be the primary consideration”.
It sounds so good. What’s better than “the best interests of the child”, right?
But for the government to make the “best interests of the child” its primary consideration, it must first decide – and come to decide – what the best interests of the child really are.
In our courts today, a judge or bureaucrat cannot make this decision without first finding that the parents of the child are unfit (abusive or neglectful). Until then, US law presumes that “the natural ties of affection parents to act in the best interests of their child” (Parham vs. J.R. (1979, italics added). So who decides what is your child’s “best interests”? It’s you, not the government.
The CRC would change that by removing this presumption that favors parents and jumping right to the part where a judge or a bureaucrat can decide. In all cases.
There are also other poison pills in the treaty, such as a child’s “right to know” that could be used to override a parent’s efforts to protect their child from pornography or other harmful web content; or a “right of access to medical care”, which can be used to exclude parents from their child’s medical decisions even more than they already are.
But content isn’t the only problem with CRC.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child
The second reason why we should not ratify the CRC is the Committee on the Rights of the Child (the Committee), an oversight committee set up by the provisions of the treaty. Since the beginning of its work in 1990, the Committee has exercised unchecked authority to decide what the treaty means or does not mean and what nations must do to comply with it.
Consider, for example, the prohibition of bodily discipline. It’s not even mentioned in the treaty. When the CRC was proposed and adopted, fewer than 10 nations worldwide banned the practice, and no nation expressed any concern that it violated children’s rights.
But the Committee, of its own volition and with nothing in the Convention to back it up, began telling nations that they were out of compliance because they had failed to ban the physical discipline of children in all settings, including the home. As a result, dozens of countries have since enacted such laws, believing it to be their international treaty obligation to do so.
Maybe you’re not a fan of body discipline anyway. But don’t let that distract you from the process at work here. Nations are bullied into changing their laws, not to conform to the treaty they voluntarily adopted, but to please a committee that makes the rules as they go.
The CRC and the US Constitution
And that brings us to the third and main reason why we must not adopt this treaty: under Article VI of our own Constitution, a ratified treaty becomes “the supreme law of the land”.
So ratifying this treaty, which for other nations is an ambitious statement at best (and for many, like Iran, China and North Korea, a mere political smokescreen), in America would enact a massive new federal family law.
Today, almost all family law is at the state level. And these laws, as bad as some of them are, are still required by the Constitution and our courts to respect the role of parents as their child’s first and best line of defense.
Under the CRC, these laws would become the responsibility of the United States Congress and respect for parents would disappear. Our system – the CRC system – would then depend on judges and bureaucrats to decide what is in the “best interests” of a child as defined by Congress, and ultimately, as defined by the CRC.
No, not the Convention on the Rights of the Child. THE Committee on the rights of the child.
Because ratifying the Convention would leave it to this elitist, foreign committee to decide when or if our treatment of children was acceptable under the CRC.
But you and I know that parents, except in extreme cases, are the ones who love their children the most and know what is best for them.
How is a foreign committee supposed to know what is best for your child better than you?
We strongly oppose
Fortunately, there is no significant threat that the CRC will be taken over by President Trump or sent to the Senate, and there is no significant threat that this Senate will give its two-thirds consent.
But as long as lawmakers like Rep. Omar want to keep presenting it as a great project our nation should undertake, we will raise our voices to remind them why this would be a horrible idea for our children.
Thank you for supporting us as we protect the parental rights of all threats against the family, including those arising from international law.
