What deserves attention at the UN

C-Fam reports the goings-on in some of the United Nations’ committees.

They’re covering issues that deserve more widespread attention. Like what proponents of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) are up to.

According to UNICEF, the CRC has resulted “in the increased usage of ‘child rights’ language in the vernacular of national and international legal documents, policies, programs and advocacy.”

However…

Critics point out that while the UNICEF report contains a lot of anecdotal evidence regarding the positive effects of the treaty, it is nearly silent on the work of the CRC committee, the body charged with monitoring state compliance with the treaty and consisting of 18 “experts” in child rights. 

The report claims that the Convention “sets out common standards” yet leaves room for State parties of finding their “own way of implementing the treaty.” Over the years, the CRC committee has chastised countries for allowing corporal punishment, mandated governments to increase state-sponsored day care, pushed recognition of a child’s right to privacy “especially in the family,” and pushed for adolescent family planning and reproductive health and sex education programs, despite possible parental objections.

Good time to remember the campaign to gather signatures on the UN Petition for the Unborn Child.

And then, there’s the coverage C-Fam has out right now on what’s legitimately not getting attention on the Women’s Rights Committee, and as they say….shouldn’t.

The committee responsible for monitoring state compliance with the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) says it increased its activism in the last two years by working more closely with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to develop its agenda, and with select parliamentarians and jurists to enforce it across the globe.

On the other hand, according to the report, many nations are simply ignoring the committee and refusing to send in their reports.

And why are they doing that?

Pro-life and pro-family groups have long criticized the fact that the CEDAW committee has read a right to abortion into the treaty via its “General Recommendation 24” even though abortion is never mentioned in the document. Since adopting the “general recommendation” in 1999, the committee has pressured more than 90 countries to liberalize their abortion laws.

They’re trying, these abortion activists.