United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child "...THE TIDAL WAVE!" By Reverend Wayne C. Sedlak Position Paper Volume 6 FOREWARNING: The subject of this report, THE U.N. CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD is the second report on an immediate threat that carries deadly potential for the life and sanctity of the historical family structure. As a function of the "child advocacy" or "children's liberation" movement, its claims appear to be humanitarian on the surface in the correction of social ills. In reality, it is yet another classic case of the "cure" being worse than the disease. If the current educational and social reforms sweeping the nation can be likened to the "rising tide" accompanying an incoming storm, the U.N. CONVENTION is... the tidal wave! RESHAPING THE LANDSCAPE On Sunday, August 26, 1883, a distant thundering was heard in the cities and villages dotting the coastline of Sunda Strait, Indonesia. To many of the residents, it sounded as though cannon were being fired. The noise steadily increased in volume. Houses shook, windows shattered and people fled in panic. What the inhabitants were experiencing was the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa, many miles distant. The eruption was so enormous that its vapor plume reached up 17 miles into the sky. The blast scattered great volumes of superheated gas and debris over a 125 square mile area. On the evening of August 26, long, deep swells began to rise higher than the high tide mark. At first, a wall of water three feet deep poured over the piers in Sumatra's Lampong Bay. Then six foot walls of water began to sweep inland. Coastal buildings were flooded and ships dragged their anchors. This was just the beginning of the ocean's rage. Suddenly, a sequence of enormous tidal waves attaining heights from 50 to 130 feet in size came crashing through. Billions of gallons of raging ocean water buried the town of Kalimbang to a depth of 80 feet. At Merak, hundreds of people sought refuge on top of a 135-foot hill. One tidal wave swept them all away. Only 2 of the 3000 residents survived in that town. One sea captain described meeting the wave head-on. His ship "...lifted up with a dizzying rapidity. The ship made a formidable leap, and immediately afterwards we felt as though we had plunged into the abyss." Unlike others, his boat somehow miraculously survived. Ships, houses, towns, ports, people and even whole islands were lost to this terror from the ocean depths. (1) ANOTHER RISING TIDE Over the past two decades, many educational and societal reforms affecting children have been introduced in the United States. The 1983 report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk, darkly warned the American public: ...the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people. The same report presented some gruesome statistics: - 23 million adults are functionally illiterate. - 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United States can be considered functionally illiterate. - International comparisons of student achievement... reveal that on 19 academic tests American students were never first or second and... were last seven times. - SAT scores "show a virtually unbroken decline from 1963 to 1980." Since that time many reforms have been tried and found wanting. The educational morass has only widened its scope. To further aggravate the situation, morality has taken a nose-dive. Destructive tendencies have gripped our children. Since 1963 the following patterns have emerged: -Birth rates for unwed girls (15-19 years of age) have dramatically increased from about 13 per 1000 unwed girls to 34 in 1987. Gonorrhea increases in age group 15-19 years old are up from 400 cases per 100,000 total population in 1963 to 1200 in 1987. -Pregnancies of unwed girls under 15 years of age were about 4000 in 1963 as compared to 26,000 in 1987. - Cases of other sexually transmitted diseases were about 350,000 in 1963. 1990 saw almost 4 times as many. -There have been over 31 million abortions since 1973 alone, a large percentage coming from teenage girls. It is interesting that since 1963, it has been illegal for the public schools to allow the teaching of historic Christian truths or prayer in the public classrooms including the Ten Commandments. Despite three decades of professional denials to the contrary, one might suspect that the 1963 removal of the moral foundations derived from our Christian heritage might contribute to the collapse of our youth into immoral, destructive behavior. One should suspect... To "combat" this crisis, the "GOALS 2000" educational, cultural and societal goal's reform is now sweeping the nation. Many fear this unproven gamble because it has almost no statistical foundation underlying its acceptance. This "faith offering" may be especially critical in light of the fact that its goals have been mandated by the federal government for all children nationally. It is, in essence, a "trust me" approach to reform from the people who brought us the crisis in the first place. The 1983 A Nation at Risk made a rather telling statement to capsulize its observations. The report said that if a foreign power had somehow contrived to inflict this type of damage upon our children as our educational and political leadership have done, it might well have been considered an act of war. Well, as a matter of fact, a foreign power is about to inflict its designs upon our children. And many feel it too could be construed as an act of war. THE TIDE RISING STILL This reform doesn't lack authority. On March 5, 1990, representatives from more than 150 countries met in Jomtien, Thailand. This five-day World Conference on Education for All was sponsored by UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP (United Nations Development Program), the World Bank, and an assortment of other U.N. agencies. The result was a declaration of six international goals for education...six goals which look very much like our six original America 2000 goals. So much for spontaneity. Working in tandem with the educational reforms is the children's rights movement, which began in the 1960's. Ronald and Beatrice Gross, two of the leading children's rights advocates, have stated that the movement was launched "to rectify the shameful conditions that lead to the damage and death of so many children." Young people, they said, are the most oppressed of all minorities. They are discriminated against on the basis of age in every area from movie admissions to sex. They are traditionally the subjects of ridicule, humiliation and mental torture in homes, schools, and other institutions. Douglas Phillips, nationally renowned expert on the U.N. Convention and an attorney for the National Center for Home Education, has issued this warning in his SPECIAL REPORT ON THE UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD: Advocates of this philosophy identify the traditional family as the single greatest threat to the welfare of the child. A basic presupposition for children's rights activists is that the child will not experience a truly healthy environment until he is unshackled from every conceivable restraint imposed by parents. In addition, at least one leader, who has led the fight for the child advocacy movement, has publicly stated the hope that the CONVENTION would "rid ...children of the pernicious influence of Christianity." The point of this movement is to provide a state authority that could intervene on behalf of any child, protecting him from some alleged or real abuse, loss of rights, opportunity, or advantage to which he is "entitled." Be assured, the United Nations has volunteered for the job. Of course, unlike that "miserable failure" called the family, which we poor mortals have spent most of our wretched lives building, such advocates are declared to be "oh so honorable", wise and well-intended. You know, I agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson, "the more he talked of his honor the faster we counted our spoons." THE TIDAL WAVE! The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the 44th General Assembly of the United Nations on November 20, 1989. Over 70 nations have signed the Convention. To date, the United States has not signed the Convention. Editorial columnist Sam Francis has described the Convention as ... essentially seeking to create a uniform global family-management apparatus that can regulate the basic processes of socialization for kids--not just their dietary and health habits but also their education, their relatives and the social institutions that order their minds. What the Department of Health and Human Services has done to American society, the bureaucracies to be created under this Convention will do to the planet." In order to see this danger, a look at some of the more relevant provisions of the Convention is in order. The summaries listed below are provided by Douglas Phillips. (My COMMENTS are so indicated within each summary) Article 3: "In all actions concerning children," the courts, social service workers and bureaucrats are empowered to regulate families based on their subjective determination of "the best interest of the child." This article shifts the responsibility of parental judgment and decision making from the family to the State (and ultimately the United Nations). Article 4: This provision makes clear that the treaty is not just a positive affirmation. Signatory nations are bound to "undertake all appropriate legislative, administrative, and other measures, for the implementation of the rights" articulated in the Convention. In fact, the United States would be required to "undertake measures to the maximum extent of available resources... within the framework of international co-operation" in order to restructure society in accordance with the implementation of these rights. Article 7: In order to insure State and U.N. control over their development, all children must be immediately registered after birth. COMMENT: This registration falls in line with recent reforms which begin tracking each child from birth and storing all cultural, educational, health care, immunization, and belief system developments in a central computer tracking system. This, of course, means that the child is subject, from infancy, to various statist control devices, if the state so chooses to use them. Why could that be a concern? Listen to OBE reform pioneer Dr. William Spady. He makes the following "Assumption Regarding the Future": Despite the historical trend toward intellectual enlightenment and cultural pluralism, there has been a major rise in religious and political orthodoxy, intolerance, fundamentalism, and conservatism with which young people will have to be prepared to deal. Since few people would ever consider their own opinions "heretical" (not to mention "intolerant") one is forced to inquire as to what constitutes "religious and political orthodoxy" in Dr. Spady's view. It is very clear that OBE is designed to arm the mass of public school students with politically correct attitudes toward certain apparent problem groups. The influence of such groups will be neutralized by this well-trained mass of government school students. The "need" for educational restructuring appears to be none other than the "need" for coerced political and religious conformity. Article 13: Under this provision, parents would be subject to prosecution for any attempt to prevent their children from interaction with pornography, rock music, or television. Little children are vested with a "freedom of expression" right which is virtually absolute. No allowance is made for parental guidance. Section 1 declares a child's right to "seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice." Article 14: Children are guaranteed "freedom of thought, conscience and religion." Children have a legal right to object to all religious training...(and) may assert their right against parental objection ... COMMENT: The problem certainly will include cases of children rebelling against their parental training. The real problem involves the recognition that the state will be intervening on behalf of minors. Minors are legally considered to be individuals who are unable to express their own best interests. So, unlike other "rights" movements, children will be "spoken for" with or without their own consent because of their legal status as minors. Article 16: This article gives the child a virtually absolute "right of privacy" to be enforced at law against all others, including parents. COMMENT: "Right to Privacy" was the operative legal terminology in the Roe v. Wade decision which guaranteed the "right" to an abortion. However, since the state will be acting on behalf of a (pregnant) minor the issue is again raised as to parental sanctions. Will the parents be held accountable as irresponsible in allowing an unwarranted pregnancy to develop in the first place? This type of thinking is appearing in the literature. The sanctions against the parents for a pregnancy could include fines. In addition, as a minor, the child may have no choice at all and may risk sanctions for failure to comply. Will America get the "Red Chinese model" for abortion--families taxed and fined for unsanctioned pregnancies and "moms" lined up 400 deep outside the abortuaries? If we thought we had an abortion problem now (and we do!), what will happen when statist law mandates population control directives as having primacy over personal considerations? Article 17: The international media is declared the agent for safeguarding the character of children around the world: "State parties recognize the function performed by the mass media... especially those aimed at promotion of his or her social, spiritual and moral well-being and physical and mental health." Article 19: This provision mandates the creation of an intensive bureaucracy for the purpose of "identification, reporting, referral, investigation, treatment, and follow-up" of parents who, in violation of the child's "rights", treat their children negligently. Article 25: The governments of the signatory nations are required to provide "the highest standard of health care facilities", including "family planning and education services." COMMENT: Now we begin to see why, in the first place, the Clinton Administration wants to restructure health care and, additionally, include abortion referral services, condom distribution, and other sexual preferences IN THE SCHOOLS! Article 27: Parents are required to implement "conditions of living necessary for the child's development." These "conditions of living" are to derive from a State-determined standard of living for the child which suitably provides for his "physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development." COMMENT: The U.N. is directly declaring its authority in determining the mental (thought life) and spiritual (beliefs, faith, values, ethics) development here! Article 28: Education is declared a "right" which is not only to be universally free, but compulsory... The nations are challenged to unite in the creation of an internationalist approach to education. COMMENT: The Jomtien Conference of November 1990 is already working to coordinate this internationalist approach in the "goals" promotion reforms. Goals 2000 is no accident. Article 43: An international committee of 10 "experts" is to be established to oversee the progress of the implementation of the Treaty. CONCLUSION: WHAT TO DO This "tidal wave" would radically restructure this nation's historic institutions, laws and values. It must be opposed, unconditionally! 1) Write your Senators immediately and tell them to vote "no" on the U.N. CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD since it is still not the law of this country. It is the Senate alone which has power to ratify treaties constitutionally...and this is a treaty. 2) Write us as part of an ever expanding network of concerned parents and volunteer to be an area contact person: Parent Information Network BOX 733 ELM GROVE, WI 53122 (1) Great Disasters, Reader's Digest, pp.138-141.