Three Major Developments Threatening Parental Rights

In their article Civil Rights Forces Mobilize, Parentalrights.org reports that in just the last few weeks there have been major developments that put parental rights at risk.

Three major developments—all of them ominous—have occurred in the last several days.

1. On June 1 and 2, Georgetown University Law School hosted a two-day symposium entitled “The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC): Why It Is Time to Ratify.”

This well-funded conference was held to organize a new coalition effort by American internationalists to seek ratification of the UN child’s rights treaty.

2. In the second week of June, a major study was released by the British education ministry calling for dramatically dangerous increases in the regulation of homeschoolers in that nation.

This study concludes that the UN CRC requires that the government enter every homeschooling home and privately interview each homeschooling child to determine “the child’s wishes” regarding his or her education.

3. On June 17, at the UN headquarters in Geneva, the UN’s Human Rights Committee—which oversees all human rights treaties—announced that it was forming a committee to draft a new “protocol” for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Under this new addition to the CRC, individual children would be able to file a formal legal complaint if they believe that their rights had been violated. It would give this new international tribunal the right to determine if the child’s treaty rights had been violated by any person.

It is obvious from the recent symposium at Georgetown that supporters of the UNCRC are beginning to organize and push for the US to ratify this treaty. The recent study in Britain confirms that the UNCRC is unfavorable to homeschooling and would require the government, not parents, to determine what is in the best interest of the child's education. And since the UN Human Rights committee is seeking new protocols for the UNCRC that would give children the power to sue their parents we can see that the threats against parental rights are very real. In America, parents, not judges, need to be the decision makers in the lives of their own children. These latest developments are a reminder as to why we need to take action now to protect parental rights. The only way to stop all threats against parental rights is to pass the The Parental Rights Amendment. To learn more about the proposed amendment or to find ways you can help protect parental rights, visit parentalrights.org.