Fulfilling U.S. Children’s Human Rights through the UN Children’s Rights Convention

Overview: We make a case for social work renewing efforts to press for U.S. ratification of the UN children’s rights treaty. Ratification would provide a mechanism to amplify campaigns to realize U.S. children’s economic and social rights, address racial inequities, and respect the rights of migrant children in the country.Proposal text: Background/Rationale
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN General Assembly, 1989) is a landmark human rights treaty to protect, respect and fulfill children’s human rights. The only country that has failed to join the treaty is the United States, a matter of comment in social work for decades (Brieland, Falon, & Korr, 1994; Hermann, 1991). This panel provides an overview of the relevance of the Convention and its provisions for clinical and policy practice related to child well-being in the United States. Through development of three case examples, we illustrate how the standards set out in the treaty are relevant today and argue for social work re-engagement to press for ratification of the CRC.

Panelists develop three examples of how CRC standards could help realize children’s human rights in the United States. These are: implementing the enhanced child tax credit as a matter of permanent policy, attending to racial disparities in food and housing insecurity, and prioritizing the rights of migrant children to protection from harm caused by ongoing family separation and child detention.

First, panelists outline how wide variability in cash assistance benefits under Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (Bruch et al, 2018) violates the equitable realization of children’s right to an adequate standard of living. Child poverty has received renewed attention in recent months in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The policy window created by the pandemic led to an unprecedented, but temporary, expansion of federal assistance, both through the expansion of existing programs, like the child tax credit, and in the form of direct stimulus payments to households (American Rescue Plan Act, 2021). Retaining the expanded funding is a matter of children’s human rights.

Second, we highlight how racial discrimination compounds economic and social rights violations. Notwithstanding U.S. ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination in 1994 (UN General Assembly, 1965), U.S. civil society activism has yet to emphasize the economic and social rights of children of color. Racial disparities are also apparent in the disproportionate experiences of children of color in terms of food and housing insecurity and overrepresentation within the foster care and juvenile justice systems (Rank & Hirschl, 2009; National Conference of State Legislatures, 2021).

In the third rights issue, we address the rights of child migrants in the United States. Despite legal protections, child migrants continue to have their rights to health, family integrity, and freedom from detention violated (Cheatham & Roy, 2021; UN CMW & CRC, n.d.). Examples from clinical and forensic work with migrant children illustrates the impact of these violations and supports the call to ratify the CRC, a treaty designed, in part, to protect children from family separation and detention except as a last resort.

Implications
Through the three cases we illustrate that everyday policy matters linked to child welfare broadly understood stand to benefit from social work’s renewed push to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.