Borrowed from FerraSwan over on IG

Today I found out the US is the only UN member country who has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

This is, in part, because the US is violating it And, in part, because it is difficult to ratify with our country’s constitution, as it requires 2/3 majority in the Senate. That means MORE THAN 1/3 of the Senate does not support Children’s Rights as agreed upon by the UN.

Again, the US is THE ONLY country. It’s been over 30 years since the US signed it, but no ratification.

It makes me wonder what other International Treaties we haven’t signed.

From the linked report:

"The protection of children from all forms of violence is a fundamental right, guaranteed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)[1] and other international treaties Violence can take different forms, can be perpetrated by dif- ferent individuals and can occur in different settings. Children who are exposed to or witness violence can experience acute and long-term damage to their physical, cognitive, social and emotional development. The consequences can be lifelong and transgenerational and lead to economic disadvantages and a reduced quality of life. Furthermore, evidence shows the association between exposure to violence in childhood (as a victim or witness) and the risk of experiencing or per- petrating violence during adolescence or adulthood.1 Hence, violence against children has far-reaching costs for society, slowing economic development and eroding nations’ human and social capital. In 2015, with the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global community made a commitment to end all forms of violence against children by 2030. The SDGs include specific targets for measuring progress in this regard. In particular, Goal 16, on promoting just, peaceful and inclusive societies, includes two targets that explicitly relate to violence: target 16.1, “Significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere” and target 16.2, “End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture of children”. Although the inclusion of these targets2 draws much needed attention to the importance of preventing and respond- ing to violence against children, the availability of comparable data remains limited."

As a leftist, one of my frustrations with the media of radical critique is its frequent neglect if not obliviousness to the social measurement movement - the attempt by social scientists and activists to quantify social realities in order to give policy makers and change seekers the evidence they need to press for reform.

The flagship example of this is the UN's Human Development Reports (HDR): https://hdr.undp.org. These are excellent global surveys of wide ranging social data. If you want to construct a broad picture of where our species is at across many domains of inquiry and ethical concern, start with these reports.

There exist many other social indices, and any number proposed in theory. The fact that these are not widely known in left circles, let alone used for political purposes, is an ongoing puzzle and frustration to me.

In any case, the ICVAC seems to me to be a landmark document that can direct attention and resources at what must be a top priority - the protection and care of children, and the reform of all practices and systems that would abuse and neglect them.

[1] And, of course, the US refuses to ratify the Convention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child#United_States : "The United States government played an active role in the drafting of the convention and signed it on 16 February 1995, but has not ratified it. It has been claimed that American opposition to the convention stems primarily from political and religious conservatives."

Eradicate Child labour!

Globally, one in ten children works. The majority of the child labour that occurs today is for economic exploitation. That goes against the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which recognizes “the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”

Make child protection a priority for the decades to come!

Nearly one hundred school children visited the United Nations to celebrate Universal Children's Day today. November 20th marks the day the General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959, and the in 1989. The young visitors took a special tour, got a UN stamp on their hand and attended a workshop:

[QUOTE:

"And who thinks they know what UNICEF stands for? Awesome, wasn't tricky for you. United Nations Children's Fund."]]

The event touched upon topics such as equality, people's rights and basic human necessities:

[[QUOTE:

"Being able to be happy and healthy. Like having healthy food and not having to drink water with yucky stuff in it."]]

These children knew that the UN works worldwide to help people solve big problems:

[[QUOTE:

"We read... that every five seconds children are dying from hunger."]]

UN officials marked the Universal Children's Day 2013 with a call to make child protection a priority for the decades to come.

In January, the occupation re-arrested a child, who was among those who were released in the exchange deal that took place in November 2023

- Palestinian Prisoner’s Society

everything i learn about the estadunidense legal system sounds like a nightmare, you guys don't burn nearly enough stuff for the conditions you live in

Oh don't pay attention to me. Just sharing some international laws that are so unpopular with republican senators in the USA that we don't have these laws in the USA.

“That character is underage, they’re like sixteen!”

“Technically yes but they are actually more like two, because they are a goddamn robot.”

The United States is the only country in the world that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Generally speaking, American children’s rights are adequately protected, but considerable problems still exist regarding health care, child abuse, juvenile law, etc.

Who opposes the Convention in the U.S.? The same people shrieking most loudly about abortion: conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians.

The Right to Health More than 8 million children in the United States have no health insurance, meaning about one in ten children. Thousands of others are underinsured, which impedes their right to quality health care services. Statistics show that these children are ten times less likely to receive treatment for conditions such as diabetes, asthma, oral diseases, and obesity. Children of ethic minorities (African-Americans or Hispanics) are more at risk than others : almost a quarter of them are not vaccinated against the most common serious illnesses.

...

Child Labour Although child labour laws have been well enforced in the US, thousands of children, especially Hispanics, work in arduous agricultural environments. They work 14 hours a day during the harvest season, and usually end up abandoning their studies. They are also exposed to pesticides and other agrochemical treatments, which can cause serious health problems.

More at the link.

vent post. There are two stories i was told in my teenage years that even before i had a real concept of trans issues made me uninterested in discussing the supposed sacredness and safety of separated sex-based spaces.

First, when i was like 13 or 14 my PE teacher told us about a time she went to a women's public restroom, some guy was hanging out outside the bathrooms, she didn't think anything of it, went to the bathroom, and he walked in after her and like, creeped on her over the top of the stall. She was ok, she wasn't telling us this to scare us, just telling us what to do in situations like that (and iirc she was telling the whole co-ed class this, not just girls, bc it's useful for everyone), but this taught me immediately and forever that there's nothing actually keeping these spaces separate really, that anyone can be a creep in any space, and that establishing a space like that as for women only isn't actually particularly useful for safety.

Second, when i was 16 i was at an anime convention, a friendly acquaintance of mine and i ended up in conversation outside, and he showed me his bare wrist and told me he'd been kicked out. A female friend of his had stepped in dog poop outside, and between that and the stress of the convention she'd had a bit of an emotional breakdown, so being her friend, he started comforting her and ushered her into the women's restroom so they could wash the poop off her shoe together. And because he was a man who went into the women's bathroom, he got kicked out, no matter that he was doing something that was actually beneficial to a woman. Punishing a woman's friend for supporting her was supposed to... protect her somehow? This made it clear to me that a no-exceptions rule separating the sexes like that wasn't actually inherently good for everyone.

And this isn't even getting into me as a child needing to accompany my younger sister to the restroom when we were out with just my dad because she had certain support needs past the age he felt comfortable bringing her into the men's room with him. And what if I'd been born a boy, or she'd been the first born? Who's helping her then?

And of course even putting all this aside, we should always prioritize compassion and support anyway. But i never even needed to meet a trans person to know that "keeping men out of women's bathrooms" is silly nonsense. But trans people also need to pee anyway and as humans they have that right, so leave them the fuck alone. your precious women's restroom is just a fucking room with a door, holy shit give it a fucking rest, if someone is attacking you in the bathroom that's bad and if someone is in there to pee that's good and it doesn't fucking matter what their junk is or was when they were born.

a woman could have done the exact same thing to my PE teacher and it would have also been bad no matter how "supposed" to be in the restroom she was, and no one should ever be punished for helping a crying friend wash their shoe.

Anyway i know I'm speaking to like-minded folks here, i just think about those two stories literally every time bathroom gender shit comes up and it pisses me off.

Marking the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Convention on the Rights of the Child

Targeting children in conflict zones represents a grave war crime, blatantly violating fundamental tenets of international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

12,345 children killed in Gaza.

Born on this day in 1999, Jordan River Anderson spent the first two years of his life in a hospital. When doctors cleared Jordan to live in a family home, the federal and provincial governments could not resolve who was financially responsible for the necessary home care. For over two years, the Government of Canada, and the Manitoba provincial government continued to argue while Jordan remained in the hospital. In 2005, at the age of five, Jordan died in the hospital; he never had the opportunity to live in a family home.

Strengthen the meaningful engagement of girls and young women in all areas of public life, facilitating access to decision-makers.

Governments should: - Remove any institutional barriers that constrain girl-led groups and youth groups’ freedoms of association and assembly, access to information, the right to privacy and to be heard. Their autonomy must be respected and free from unwanted interference. - Ensure that national laws and policies make it possible for girls and young women to choose to organise within movements or associations and legally register or not, without repercussion on their activities or their funding options. - Provide, along with local authorities, the necessary spaces and resources to enable girl and youth led groups to engage in public dialogue and decision-making as respected members of civil society. - Adopt, budget for, implement and monitor national legislation and policies to ensure girls and young women activists in all their diversity, are able to actively contribute to public life. This should include legislation that acknowledges and protects all children and young people from violence and particularly girls and women from gender-based discrimination when they choose to be politically active. Legislation and policies should be full consistent with international human rights law including the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Governments, local government and national ministries must: - Increase, strengthen and adequately resource existing structures that enable girls and young people’s participation within formal governance mechanisms such as national youth councils, and child and youth parliaments: ensuring these structures operate in a way that is gender- and ageresponsive and promote the inclusion of girls and young women in all their diversity. United Nations, governments and the international community must: - Fulfil their commitment to girls’ and young women’s meaningful participation in the shaping, implementation and monitoring of global development agendas and frameworks. This should include upholding existing commitments to girls, gender equality and the Leave No One Behind principle in the SDG framework and other processes such as Generation Equality and the International Conference on Population and Development. To ensure girls and young women can access and freely express their views and recommendations at all levels of decision-making, governments should consider their inclusion in national delegations to intergovernmental spaces, including, but not limited to, the SDG Summit in September 2023 and the Summit of the Future in September 2024.