12 HUMAN RIGHTS LAW


THE UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD: SHOULD IT BE RATIFIED AND WHY?


Don S. Browning


The United States helped write the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC or “Convention”) and signed it in 1989. But the U.S. Senate has never ratified it. Those who argue that the Senate should ratify the Convention point out, with both derision and glee that, along with Somalia, the United States is the only other member of the United Nations that has not officially agreed to this document supporting the rights of children – the most vulnerable members of the human family. Why has the United States refused to give its final approval? Does its reluctance have any justification?


This essay argues that the United States should ratify the Convention. However, the reasons advanced for its failure to do so should also be taken seriously. In the end, I conclude that the reasons do not, in reality, hold. Nonetheless, that conclusion is based on an interpretation of the Convention in light of the meaning of statements about family and children in the earlier Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and other U.N. covenants that the UDHR has influenced.


Insofar as the direction of the many U.N. statements on human rights may be drifting away from the rationales of the UDHR, the grounds for refusing to ratify the Convention become reasons to pause and reflect. Upon further examination of the CRC, it is my judgment that the original meaning of statements about children and family made in the UDHR still, for the most part, hold in the CRC. For this reason, the Convention is safe to adopt for the United States. Furthermore, once adopted and properly interpreted, the United States could play a significant role in shaping the proper understanding and implementation of the Convention both at home and in other parts of the world.


Various groups in American society have expressed fears about the Convention and have been successful in influencing the deliberations of Senate committees contemplating its ratification. Groups that reject the CRC tend to be fearful that government is undermining the rights of parents over their children. They also tend to be skeptical of the directions of international family law and distrustful of how international treaties might trump democratic deliberations about children and families in our own individual state legislatures and courts.


Those supporting ratification of the Convention assure that the opposition’s fears have no bases in reality. Supporters point to the U.S. Senate’s reluctance to invoke the Supremacy Clause in implementing human rights treaties at the national level. Proponents also point to the relatively frail report-and-consultation powers of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the only implementation body provided for by the CRC. In short, proponents insist that the Child’s Rights Committee has no teeth – no powers short of embarrassment and persuasion which States Parties can easily ignore.


Extracts from Browning, D. ‘The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: Should it be ratified and why?’ Emory International Law Review 20, 2006, pp. 157–84.


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