United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child "...THE TIDAL WAVE!" By Reverend Wayne C. Sedlak

   Position Paper Volume 6

   FOREWARNING:

   The subject of this report, THE U.N. CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE
CHILD is the second report on an immediate threat that carries deadly
potential for the life and sanctity of the historical family structure.
As a function of the "child advocacy" or "children's liberation"
movement, its claims appear to be humanitarian on the surface in the
correction of social ills. In reality, it is yet another classic case
of the "cure" being worse than the disease. If the current educational
and social reforms sweeping the nation can be likened to the "rising
tide" accompanying an incoming storm, the U.N. CONVENTION is... the
tidal wave!

   RESHAPING THE LANDSCAPE

   On Sunday, August 26, 1883, a distant thundering was heard in the
cities and villages dotting the coastline of Sunda Strait, Indonesia.
To many of the residents, it sounded as though cannon were being fired.
The noise steadily increased in volume. Houses shook, windows shattered
and people fled in panic. What the inhabitants were experiencing was
the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa, many miles distant. The eruption was
so enormous that its vapor plume reached up 17 miles into the sky. The
blast scattered great volumes of superheated gas and debris over a 125
square mile area.

   On the evening of August 26, long, deep swells began to rise higher
than the high tide mark. At first, a wall of water three feet deep
poured over the piers in Sumatra's Lampong Bay. Then six foot walls of
water began to sweep inland. Coastal buildings were flooded and ships
dragged their anchors.

   This was just the beginning of the ocean's rage. Suddenly, a
sequence of enormous tidal waves attaining heights from 50 to 130 feet
in size came crashing through. Billions of gallons of raging ocean
water buried the town of Kalimbang to a depth of 80 feet. At Merak,
hundreds of people sought refuge on top of a 135-foot hill. One tidal
wave swept them all away. Only 2 of the 3000 residents survived in that
town. One sea captain described meeting the wave head-on. His ship
"...lifted up with a dizzying rapidity. The ship made a formidable
leap, and immediately afterwards we felt as though we had plunged into
the abyss." Unlike others, his boat somehow miraculously survived.
Ships, houses, towns, ports, people and even whole islands were lost to
this terror from the ocean depths. (1)

   ANOTHER RISING TIDE

   Over the past two decades, many educational and societal reforms
affecting children have been introduced in the United States. The 1983
report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation
at Risk, darkly warned the American public:

   ...the educational foundations of our society are presently being
eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as
a nation and a people.

   The same report presented some gruesome statistics:

   - 23 million adults are functionally illiterate.

   - 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United States can be
considered functionally illiterate.

   - International comparisons of student achievement... reveal that on
19 academic tests American students were never first or second and...
were last seven times.

   - SAT scores "show a virtually unbroken decline from 1963 to 1980."

   Since that time many reforms have been tried and found wanting. The
educational morass has only widened its scope.

   To further aggravate the situation, morality has taken a nose-dive.
Destructive tendencies have gripped our children. Since 1963 the
following patterns have emerged:

   -Birth rates for unwed girls (15-19 years of age) have dramatically
increased from about 13 per 1000 unwed girls to 34 in 1987. Gonorrhea
increases in age group 15-19 years old are up from 400 cases per
100,000 total population in 1963 to 1200 in 1987.

   -Pregnancies of unwed girls under 15 years of age were about 4000 in
1963 as compared to 26,000 in 1987.

   - Cases of other sexually transmitted diseases were about 350,000 in
1963. 1990 saw almost 4 times as many.

   -There have been over 31 million abortions since 1973 alone, a large
percentage coming from teenage girls.

   It is interesting that since 1963, it has been illegal for the
public schools to allow the teaching of historic Christian truths or
prayer in the public classrooms including the Ten Commandments. Despite
three decades of professional denials to the contrary, one might
suspect that the 1963 removal of the moral foundations derived from our
Christian heritage might contribute to the collapse of our youth into
immoral, destructive behavior. One should suspect...

   To "combat" this crisis, the "GOALS 2000" educational, cultural and
societal goal's reform is now sweeping the nation. Many fear this
unproven gamble because it has almost no statistical foundation
underlying its acceptance. This "faith offering" may be especially
critical in light of the fact that its goals have been mandated by the
federal government for all children nationally. It is, in essence, a
"trust me" approach to reform from the people who brought us the crisis
in the first place.

   The 1983 A Nation at Risk made a rather telling statement to
capsulize its observations. The report said that if a foreign power had
somehow contrived to inflict this type of damage upon our children as
our educational and political leadership have done, it might well have
been considered an act of war. Well, as a matter of fact, a foreign
power is about to inflict its designs upon our children. And many feel
it too could be construed as an act of war.

   THE TIDE RISING STILL

   This reform doesn't lack authority. On March 5, 1990,
representatives from more than 150 countries met in Jomtien, Thailand.
This five-day World Conference on Education for All was sponsored by
UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP (United Nations Development Program), the World
Bank, and an assortment of other U.N. agencies. The result was a
declaration of six international goals for education...six goals which
look very much like our six original America 2000 goals. So much for
spontaneity.

   Working in tandem with the educational reforms is the children's
rights movement, which began in the 1960's. Ronald and Beatrice Gross,
two of the leading children's rights advocates, have stated that the
movement was launched "to rectify the shameful conditions that lead to
the damage and death of so many children." Young people, they said,

   are the most oppressed of all minorities. They are discriminated
against on the basis of age in every area from movie admissions to sex.
They are traditionally the subjects of ridicule, humiliation and mental
torture in homes, schools, and other institutions.

   Douglas Phillips, nationally renowned expert on the U.N. Convention
and an attorney for the National Center for Home Education, has issued
this warning in his SPECIAL REPORT ON THE UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION ON
THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD:

   Advocates of this philosophy identify the traditional family as the
single greatest threat to the welfare of the child. A basic
presupposition for children's rights activists is that the child will
not experience a truly healthy environment until he is unshackled from
every conceivable restraint imposed by parents.

   In addition, at least one leader, who has led the fight for the
child advocacy movement, has publicly stated the hope that the
CONVENTION would "rid ...children of the pernicious influence of
Christianity."

   The point of this movement is to provide a state authority that
could intervene on behalf of any child, protecting him from some
alleged or real abuse, loss of rights, opportunity, or advantage to
which he is "entitled." Be assured, the United Nations has volunteered
for the job. Of course, unlike that "miserable failure" called the
family, which we poor mortals have spent most of our wretched lives
building, such advocates are declared to be "oh so honorable", wise and
well-intended. You know, I agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson, "the more he
talked of his honor the faster we counted our spoons."

   THE TIDAL WAVE!

   The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted by the
44th General Assembly of the United Nations on November 20, 1989. Over
70 nations have signed the Convention. To date, the United States has
not signed the Convention.

   Editorial columnist Sam Francis has described the Convention as ...

   essentially seeking to create a uniform global family-management
apparatus that can regulate the basic processes of socialization for
kids--not just their dietary and health habits but also their
education, their relatives and the social institutions that order their
minds. What the Department of Health and Human Services has done to
American society, the bureaucracies to be created under this Convention
will do to the planet."

   In order to see this danger, a look at some of the more relevant
provisions of the Convention is in order. The summaries listed below
are provided by Douglas Phillips. (My COMMENTS are so indicated within
each summary)

   Article 3: "In all actions concerning children," the courts, social
service workers and bureaucrats are empowered to regulate families
based on their subjective determination of "the best interest of the
child." This article shifts the responsibility of parental judgment and
decision making from the family to the State (and ultimately the United
Nations).

   Article 4: This provision makes clear that the treaty is not just a
positive affirmation. Signatory nations are bound to "undertake all
appropriate legislative, administrative, and other measures, for the
implementation of the rights" articulated in the Convention. In fact,
the United States would be required to "undertake measures to the
maximum extent of available resources... within the framework of
international co-operation" in order to restructure society in
accordance with the implementation of these rights.

   Article 7: In order to insure State and U.N. control over their
development, all children must be immediately registered after birth.

   COMMENT: This registration falls in line with recent reforms which
begin tracking each child from birth and storing all cultural,
educational, health care, immunization, and belief system developments
in a central computer tracking system. This, of course, means that the
child is subject, from infancy, to various statist control devices, if
the state so chooses to use them. Why could that be a concern? Listen
to OBE reform pioneer Dr. William Spady. He makes the following
"Assumption Regarding the Future":

   Despite the historical trend toward intellectual enlightenment and
cultural pluralism, there has been a major rise in religious and
political orthodoxy, intolerance, fundamentalism, and conservatism with
which young people will have to be prepared to deal.

   Since few people would ever consider their own opinions "heretical"
(not to mention "intolerant") one is forced to inquire as to what
constitutes "religious and political orthodoxy" in Dr. Spady's view. It
is very clear that OBE is designed to arm the mass of public school
students with politically correct attitudes toward certain apparent
problem groups. The influence of such groups will be neutralized by
this well-trained mass of government school students. The "need" for
educational restructuring appears to be none other than the "need" for
coerced political and religious conformity.

   Article 13: Under this provision, parents would be subject to
prosecution for any attempt to prevent their children from interaction
with pornography, rock music, or television. Little children are vested
with a "freedom of expression" right which is virtually absolute. No
allowance is made for parental guidance. Section 1 declares a child's
right to "seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds,
regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the
form of art, or through any other media of the child's choice."

   Article 14: Children are guaranteed "freedom of thought, conscience
and religion." Children have a legal right to object to all religious
training...(and) may assert their right against parental objection ...

   COMMENT: The problem certainly will include cases of children
rebelling against their parental training. The real problem involves
the recognition that the state will be intervening on behalf of minors.
Minors are legally considered to be individuals who are unable to
express their own best interests. So, unlike other "rights" movements,
children will be "spoken for" with or without their own consent because
of their legal status as minors.

   Article 16: This article gives the child a virtually absolute "right
of privacy" to be enforced at law against all others, including parents.

   COMMENT: "Right to Privacy" was the operative legal terminology in
the Roe v. Wade decision which guaranteed the "right" to an abortion.
However, since the state will be acting on behalf of a (pregnant) minor
the issue is again raised as to parental sanctions. Will the parents be
held accountable as irresponsible in allowing an unwarranted pregnancy
to develop in the first place? This type of thinking is appearing in
the literature. The sanctions against the parents for a pregnancy could
include fines. In addition, as a minor, the child may have no choice at
all and may risk sanctions for failure to comply. Will America get the
"Red Chinese model" for abortion--families taxed and fined for
unsanctioned pregnancies and "moms" lined up 400 deep outside the
abortuaries? If we thought we had an abortion problem now (and we do!),
what will happen when statist law mandates population control
directives as having primacy over personal considerations?

   Article 17: The international media is declared the agent for
safeguarding the character of children around the world: "State parties
recognize the function performed by the mass media... especially those
aimed at promotion of his or her social, spiritual and moral well-being
and physical and mental health."

   Article 19: This provision mandates the creation of an intensive
bureaucracy for the purpose of "identification, reporting, referral,
investigation, treatment, and follow-up" of parents who, in violation
of the child's "rights", treat their children negligently.

   Article 25: The governments of the signatory nations are required to
provide "the highest standard of health care facilities", including
"family planning and education services."

   COMMENT: Now we begin to see why, in the first place, the Clinton
Administration wants to restructure health care and, additionally,
include abortion referral services, condom distribution, and other
sexual preferences IN THE SCHOOLS!

   Article 27: Parents are required to implement "conditions of living
necessary for the child's development." These "conditions of living"
are to derive from a State-determined standard of living for the child
which suitably provides for his "physical, mental, spiritual, moral and
social development."

   COMMENT: The U.N. is directly declaring its authority in determining
the mental (thought life) and spiritual (beliefs, faith, values,
ethics) development here!

   Article 28: Education is declared a "right" which is not only to be
universally free, but compulsory... The nations are challenged to unite
in the creation of an internationalist approach to education.

   COMMENT: The Jomtien Conference of November 1990 is already working
to coordinate this internationalist approach in the "goals" promotion
reforms. Goals 2000 is no accident.

   Article 43: An international committee of 10 "experts" is to be
established to oversee the progress of the implementation of the Treaty.

   CONCLUSION: WHAT TO DO

   This "tidal wave" would radically restructure this nation's historic
institutions, laws and values. It must be opposed, unconditionally!

   1) Write your Senators immediately and tell them to vote "no" on the
U.N. CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD since it is still not the
law of this country. It is the Senate alone which has power to ratify
treaties constitutionally...and this is a treaty.

   2) Write us as part of an ever expanding network of concerned
parents and volunteer to be an area contact person:

   Parent Information Network BOX 733 ELM GROVE, WI 53122

   (1) Great Disasters, Reader's Digest, pp.138-141.
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