Over twenty years after the 1989 UN General Assembly vote to open the
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) for signature and
ratification by UN member states, the United States remains one of only
two UN members not to have ratified it. The other is Somalia. Child
Rights: The Movement, International Law, and Opposition explores the
reasons for this resistance. It details the objections that have arisen
to accepting this legally binding international instrument, which
presupposes indivisible universal civil, political, economic, social,
and cultural rights, and gives children special protection due to their
vulnerability. The resistance ranges from isolationist attitudes toward
international law and concerns over the fiscal impact of implementation,
to the value attached to education in a faith tradition and fears about
the academic deterioration of public education. The contributors to the
book reveal the significant positive influence that the CRC has had,
despite not being ratified, on subjects such as educational research,
child psychology, development ethics, normative ethics, and
anthropology. The book also explores the growing homeschooling trend,
which is often evangelically led in the US, but which is at loggerheads
with an equally growing social science-based movement of experts and
ethicists pressing for greater autonomy and freedom of expression for
children. Looking beyond the US, the book also addresses some of the
practical obstacles that have emerged to implementing the CRC in both
developed countries (for example, Canada and the United Kingdom) and in
poorer nations. This book, polemical and yet balanced, helps the reader
evaluate both positive and the negative implications of this influential
piece of international legislation from a variety of ethical, legal, and
social science perspectives.
