The U.S. Lags Behind in Ratification of Human Rights Convention

Happy International Human Rights Day! December 10 was chosen to honor the day when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. According to the UDHR, human rights are indivisible and inalienable, and encompass three categories: 1) civil and political rights, 2) economic, social, and cultural rights, and 3) rights that extend beyond the confines of a country and an urge for all countries who have signed the UDHR to mutually safeguard these rights for each other.

Eleanor Roosevelt and the UDHR

This morning, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, released a press statement celebrating the important of human rights and also reiterating the United States’ priority commitment to protect human rights for both its citizens and those abroad. “Human rights cannot be disconnected from other priorities,” she wrote. The U.S. is no doubt in a privileged position, with both political power and technical knowledge that allows it to contribute to far-reaching human rights work. Our nation seems to excel in the open discussions of many human rights issues and does not have as serious of human rights violations as some other countries. Isn’t it uncanny then, that the U.S. has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)?

The U.S. is among one of seven countries who have yet to ratify the CEDAW, placing it alongside Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, and Tonga. It is also the other country besides Somalia who has not ratified the CRC to this day, although it has ratified two provisions: 1) prohibiting the involvement of children in armed conflicts, and 2) prohibiting the sale, prostitution, and pornography of children.

Both the CEDAW and CRC are crucial in protecting the freedoms of children. The CEDAW promotes equality for women in the legal system, in political and public life, in access to education, in the right to equal pay, in the right to enter marriage, in the right to maternity leave. It protects women from discrimination linked to parental responsibilities and places women on the equal footing as men to enjoy human rights. The CRC protects children from neglect, abuse, exploitation, sexual abuse, underage labor, and deprivation of a national identity, healthcare, and education. It even calls for pre-and post-natal care for mothers, and seeks to ensure that children have adequate living standards that are conducive to their physical, mental, spiritual, moral, and social development.

There are several reasons for why the U.S. has not reached ratification of both of these long-overdue treaties. Opposition to the CEDAW comes from the contentious debate on women’s rights in the U.S. with regards to family planning, reproductive rights, and gender equality. Some of the same individuals and organizations that protest adoption of the CRC fear that parental rights to raise children at each parent’s discretion and traditional family structures will be undermined. However, the CRC does emphasize the importance of family involvement and guidance in nurturing the child.

It has been 31 years since the CEDAW and 12 years since the CRC went into force. The women and children of the U.S. have been waiting to have their rights. The people of the U.S. have a responsibility to recognize them and do them justice by serving them as equal human beings. 

Esther Liew

AATOP program development intern

Using Cricket to Confront Gender Inequality in Mumbai

While in Mumbai this past summer on my study abroad program, I learned from the residents living in “slums” about the systemic mistreatment of girls. The giving away of girls in marriage at the age of 16 is very commonplace. Additionally, there is a significant number of girls who are forced to drop out of school when puberty hits simply because there are no bathroom facilities for girls. Unfortunately, this basic oversight contributes to their lower educational achievement. Although girls and women play a huge role in holding up the community, they are very often dismissed as less than human beings.

Disparity in gender equality has created practices such as child marriage, high incidences of domestic violence, bodily mutilation, and constraints on a woman’s education or freedom outside the home. Harmful practices toward children can often be based upon tradition, culture, religion, or superstition. However most of these practices are rooted in individuals taking advantage of vulnerabilities faced by girls and the lack of ability to consent or refuse consent themselves. ¹ While there are initiatives that exist to protect and empower girls and women, they sometimes place less importance in addressing the male counterpart of this issue because there is less consensus on how to approach it.

Here is one account of a community organization’s effort at addressing this gender issue beginning at childhood. The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) executed a program in Mumbai, India called Parivartan, which means “transformation” in Hindi. This initiative gathered boys from the ages of 10 to 16 to play the enticing game of cricket and simultaneously challenged them to think about women’s roles and their roles as males in their communities.  These young boys spanned the economic spectrum; some came from middle and upper class families, and others were from Shivaji Nagar, a large slum community that was one of my field work locations. Of course, the cricket coaches as role models would first have to confront their personal views of gender inequality before they taught their boys about a manhood that conferred respect and equity to girls and women.

Their traditional views of men such as one of machismo and views of women as submissive helpers kept in the homes were challenged. Across the span of the program, Parivartan did see changes in the boys: they were less supportive of the physical abuse of girls. For example, most boys in the program agreed that a girl should not be hit if she did not finish her homework. However, the program hasn’t shown evidence that the little change that began here in young boys will continue to develop as they grow older, but is a launching point for other similar programs to address gender inequality. Violence is so commonplace in India, especially in poorer communities that the lessening of it will be gradual and will necessitate a difficult transformation in the heart and mindset that shifts from one of rigid and oppressive patriarchy to one of supportive gender equality. The commitment of boys and men to confront this difficult problem is redemptive to the girls and women in their community. What seems as simple to us in the U.S. as gaining support and respect from the male figures of their families already speaks a great deal about the worth of females in their eyes.

Read more about the Parivartan project here.
¹ International NGO Council on Violence Against Children, Violating Children’s Rights: Harmful Practices Based on Tradition, Culture, Religion or Superstition, http://www.crin.org/violence/search/closeup.asp?infoID=29619 (October 2012)

Esther Liew

AATOP Program Development Intern