The Human Rights Council (HRC) marked the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child last week by ignoring the slaughter of the unborn which is occurring throughout the world in contravention of international law."The HRC panels comprehensively considered all the major issues on the topic of children’s rights except the 'elephant in the room' the abortion question which was studiously ignored by all," Pat Buckley told me from Geneva, where he was lobbying at the Human Rights Council on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children.
The bitter irony of the event was best summed up by the contribution of Maud de Boer-Buquichio, Deputy Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, who highlighted the Council of Europe's efforts to promote and protect children’s rights. (A resolution calling for unlimited access to abortion throughout Europe [see my blogs of 18th March and 6th April] was rushed through the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on 16th April last year.)
She said: “The starting point for our work is in recognizing that children are not mini-persons with mini-human rights –- in fact they need more protection, not less,” she said, and that “adults want children to grow up and respect the world they are born in. It is high time that our adult world also respect children's rights."
Given that the Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises that a child needs appropriate legal protection before, as well as after birth, and given that tens of millions of unborn children are denied such legal protection by being dismembered, killed by being sucked through a tube with sharp-edged openings near the tip of the tube, or killed by being prevented from implanting in the lining of the womb by making it unreceptive to the newly-conceived embryo ... on what grounds are these children's rights being totally ignored by the Human Rights Council?
This would be an interesting question for politicians to pursue with their various governments around the world.
