Children's Rights
Saturday, January 01, 2000
I have long believed in the UN - our greatest hope for world peace, freedom from hunger, universal human rights . . . real progress.
With distress I feel my hopes receding as I read the recently drafted UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is a charter for the breakdown of the family. It transfers authority from the parent to the State.
Family life will always remain the basic building block of human society. Sadly, families can fail and a civilised community must step in and pick up the pieces. But shifting the primary responsibility for caring from parents to hirelings has universally proved a miserable and expensive failure.
Philip O'Carroll