By Samantha Singson
(NEW YORK — C-FAM) The UN released its long-awaited study on Violence Against Children last week. Commissioned by outgoing Secretary General Kofi Annan in 2003, the study attempts to provide a detailed picture of the nature, extent and causes of violence against children and provide recommendations to States to combat the global problem. While undertaken as a comprehensive study, critics say there are several omissions to the review.
The beginning of the study states that “there can be no compromise in challenging violence against children. Children’s uniqueness – their potential and vulnerability, their depending on adults – makes it imperative that they have more, not less, protection from violence.”
Conservative UN experts note that the new study makes several positive recommendations such as the preservation of the family, the recognition of the primary protective role of the family over children, and the identification of the particular vulnerability of some marginalized groups of children, such as children with disabilities, children of minority groups and refugees. However, they are disappointed the new report is silent on children before birth. Even the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) speaks about unborn children: “Whereas the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth.”
A recent report entitled “Violence Against Babies” written by CRC expert Bruce Abramson identifies three types of intentional violence against unborn children and babies: infanticide, euthanasia and the intentional termination of lives of children during the prenatal period. He writes, “At 46 million acts of violence against children in the first nine months of their lives, this must be one of the most serious, if not the most serious, human rights issues today. And although infanticide and euthanasia of babies are not as serious from a point of view of numbers, all of these categories of violence are human rights problems under international law. And they all come under the scope of the General Assembly’s request for a comprehensive study, whether or not the UN study addresses them.”
The study also makes no mention of sex-selected abortions whereby parents are forced or coerced to choose one or two children and almost inevitably choose to abort unborn girls. According to scholar Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, sex selected abortions have permanently skewed the demographic balance of China, are in the process of skewing the demographic balance of India, and have also crept into Eastern Europe and Latin America.
The General Assembly’s third committee is scheduled to take action on the Violence Against Children study in November.
Original report is found here: http://www.violencestudy.org/r25
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