Dear Editor,
As will be seen, the implications are enormous! The arguments on “Corporal Punishment” used by the Committee on the Rights of the Child have been exposed for what they are: an ingenuous, emotional device aimed at misleading our politicians. We have shown that the Convention on the Rights of the Child did not specifically address the issue, but that various “human rights” special interests within and without the UN have thereafter seen it fit to “consider that it applies to corporal punishment”. We have heard this type of argument before, and it is distasteful every time.
We have shown, courtesy of Lionel Persaud’s incisive citique, how the current regulatory provisions used by the Ministry of Education eminently satisfy the spirit and letter of the provisions in the Convention that government has actually acceeded to.
Signatory counries would hardly have adopted the legislation had the term “corporal punishment” been included. To “force’ these nations to adopt another agenda under the auspices of the Convention is scandalous and unacceptable.
We should and must hold the CRC responsible for this deception. At the same time, we should dig deeper and expose the numerous other incidents of treacherous behaviour exhibited by the CRC worldwide. Good law, like good ethics, is only possible with good data and information, after Kirby.
Now, in addition to Dr. Mark Hartwig’s 8-page expose’ “False Promises” (attached), the Heritage Foundation’s 22-page report “How the UN Conventions On Women’s and Children’s Rights Undermine Family, Religion, and Sovereignty” (also attached) effectively illustrates the unprecedented socio-political agenda that the Committee on the Rights of the Child has kept hidden from us.
The report, the most detailed thus far (122 footnotes and references), is at http://www. heritage.org/Research/InternationalOrganizations/BG1407.cfm.
Some extracts are:
“A close examination of the reports issued by U.N. committees monitoring the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) shows that these committees are pushing an agenda that counters traditional moral and social norms regarding the family, marriage, motherhood, and religion.”
“The advice that these agents of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights and other agencies give individual signatories often violates the language of the U.N.’s own founding documents and undermines a nation’s sovereign right to determine its own domestic policy. The policies and laws they push also promote behaviour that ultimately will cause greater harm to women and children, increasing family breakdown and the many problems associated with it.”
“As this report will show, the committees are very direct about what they want. One of them, for example, expressed concern that parents in England and Wales were allowed to withdraw their children from sex education programs in school; another criticized the celebration of Mothers’ Day in Belarus because it allegedly promoted a “sex-role stereotype.” Committees have criticized “cultural and religious values” that support mothers staying at home to raise their young children, because they “undermine the universality of women’s rights.” They have urged countries to institute legal structures that would allow children to take their parents to court when they disagree about the content of sex education. They advise countries that prohibit prostitution to legitimize it, and countries that have relaxed their laws against prostitution to extend to prostitution all the legal rights afforded other professions. And they have criticized conscientious objection clauses in laws for doctors that object to abortion.”
“In general, the social policy agents at these U.N. committees, working often with radical special-interest groups, advise nations to alter the very structure of their societies to decrease the emphasis on marriage, the nuclear family, parental authority, and religious beliefs; mothers are encouraged to find fulfillment by leaving their children in the care of strangers and entering the workforce, and social or legal restraints on sexual activity among adolescents are targeted for removal. Surprisingly, these committees ignore the mounting evidence that the basic family unit of married parents who worship yields far superior social outcomes for children’s health, intellectual development, and educational and income attainment, and lower rates of crime, welfare dependency, and teenage pregnancy. They also ignore polls that show most mothers would prefer staying home to raise their young children.”
We ignore the findings of these reports at our peril, and risk guiding Guyana down a calamitous path to social liberalism and anarchy.
Yours faithfully,
Roger Williams