The
International Day of the Child
The International Day of the Child is being celebrated
for the 48th year. The objectives are to ensure children their right
to childhood and to develop in the best possible sphere of confidence and
safety that we as adults are able to offer them.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was
adopted twelve years ago and contains a comprehensive list of general rights
for all children in the world.
In article 3 the UN Convention on the Rights of the
Child states:
“In all actions
concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare
institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a
primary consideration”. And furthermore “States Parties undertake to
ensure the child such protection and care as is necessary for his or her
well-being, taking into account the
rights and duties of his or her parents, legal guardians, or other individuals
legally responsible for him or her, and, to this end, shall take all
appropriate legislative and administrative measures.
Article 5 emphasizes the
respect of the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where
applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided
for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for
the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of
the child.
The child’s right to keep its identity is secured in
Article 8, and its right not to be separated from its parents or, if already
separated, the right to continuous contact with its parents, in article 9.
Applications by a foreign child or his or her parents
to enter or leave a country for the purpose of family reunification shall,
according to article 10, be dealt with in a positive, humane and expeditious
manner. Article 12 assures the child who is capable of forming own views, the
right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child. For
this purpose, the child shall be heard in any judicial and administrative
proceedings affecting it. According to article 16 no child shall be subjected
to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or
correspondence. The right of the child to be protected from economic
exploitation is ensured in article 32.
Regardless of this, several thousands of children in
the Nordic countries (adored by many as being in the frontline when it comes to
children’s rights) are experiencing that the social bureaucracy and the
administrative courts have deprived them of all these rights ensured to them by
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the European Convention on
Human Rights. Instead of acting in the best interest of the child, they have
interpreted these Conventions in a bureaucratic and child hostile way
furthermore fuelled by a positivist conception of justice, (i.e. e the view
that everything is relative and that there are no fixed values or laws and that
the justice system first of all is political, not judicial).
As a consequence children are being subjected to
unnecessary intrusion in their privacy and family life. These children suffer
real abuse initiated by the incompetence and lust of power of social workers as
well as abuse by the unknowing or “system aligned” judges in the administrative
courts. On top of this come the
well-paid and calculating foster parents who commit physical, psychological and
sexual abuse in the foster homes.
Quite a few children are subject to concealed
adoptions, i.e. e the surrender of infants to infertile couples who even get
paid for the pleasure of having children at the same time as every effort is
made to shield or isolate these children from their natural sphere of parents
and relatives.
In an article in the Gothenburg Post of
“Their social background was mostly a real catastrophe
and several of them had repeatedly been pushed around between their natural
parents and foster parents. One of the youngsters had experienced 18 foster
homes. How can the society continue placing children into foster homes when it
fails time after time? It is irrational.”
On several occasions, the European Court of Human
Rights has found
But the Nordic system of compulsory care of children
remains unchanged. Therefore, let the International Day of the Child,
Ruby Harrold-Claesson
Attorney-at-law
President of the NCHR
Translated and expanded by Peter Klevius
Anthropologist
Second Vice president of the NCHR