Last week, the United Nations shone a spotlight on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). This is a little embarrassing for the US, as it is one of only three countries not to have ratified the CRC. The other two are South Sudan (which only became a country in 2011) and Somalia, which barely has a functioning government.
The provisions of the CRC hardly seem controversial – which is probably why it is so widely adopted – and centre on protecting children against abuse, neglect and exploitation, allowing them to develop their fullest potential and enabling them to participate in family, cultural and social life. But in the US there is a fear in some circles that the CRC will interfere with the rights of parents to hit their children, or to opt out of sex education. Supporters of the CRC argue that the convention acknowledges the importance of family, and protects the rights of parents.
The end result is that the US is falling short of other countries when it comes to their commitment to children’s rights. As the Economist points out, signing up to the CRC won’t necessarily involve changing a large number of local laws, with the exception of the fact that under-18s can be jailed for life without parole, and possible changes to some states’ laws on smacking children. It does however mean that the US is standing on shaky ground when it preaches to other countries about their human rights records.
The CRC isn’t the only human rights convention that the US won’t sign. It hasn’t ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the world’s primary document on women’s equality. While a number of countries have signed CEDAW with a number of reservations, including most Arab states who have specified that they only agree to CEDAW to the extent that it doesn’t clash with Sharia law, the only other countries not to have ratified are Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Iran and the two South Pacific islands of Palau and Tonga.
It also hasn’t signed the The Convention against Enforced Disappearance, which prohibits the secret detention and abduction of people by the state. This is probably because the CIA was running secret prisons while the convention was being drafted. Nor has it ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, or the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
The biggest barrier to the US signing these treaties are fears that they will interfere with US’s sovereignty, which would be an easier argument to maintain if the country wasn’t quite so keen on infringing on other countries’ sovereignty in the name of human rights. If America is planning to rely increasingly on soft power and diplomacy to achieve its foreign policy aims in countries like Syria and Iran, it will soon find that this hypocrisy does come at a cost.
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