this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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448
TIL the USA is the only country to not have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (en.wikipedia.org)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 129 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

The US did sign and help to draft it, but to ratify you need a 2/3rd majority in the Senate. And the conservatives in Congress want domestic control over all law making and enforcement.

This could be an international treaty against punching kittens, and they would still vote no.

Edit: It’s also worth adding that a) this (like US law) has carve outs that allow kids to work under certain conditions, and b) this isn’t a labor specific treaty. This covers corporal, punishment, criminal punishment, education, gender, and sexuality, healthcare and a number of other things that are hot button issues for American conservatives.

Also, after this was drafted, the US has ratified international agreements on child labor.

Saying this is just a labor thing isn’t the full story at all.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This could be an international treaty against punching kittens, and they would still vote no.

Plus McConnell would never ratify a treaty that outlaws his favorite pastime.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

The kittens are under anesthesia when they're being punched. It's very humane.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago

For similar reasons the Tories in the UK want to throw away the current Human Rights Act.

You know, just in case it has too many rights, and they want to remove some later.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Don't forget child brides. They're still legal in many states of the US of A.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 9 months ago

It has been claimed that American opposition to the convention stems primarily from political and religious conservatives.

Shocking.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

Don't forget, our capitalists have been hard at work infecting the rest of the world with OUR greed disease. We're the ones advocating other nations stop seeing their people as valued citizens and instead as capital livestock to be exploited mercilessly.

Child labor exists elsewhere out of desperate, struggling developing economies. We're worse imho, because we're doing it amid record profits, because its never enough, and our gluttonous pig oligarch owners ever demanding mooooaaaaaar, exploiting these kids whose schools they've already destroyed and stole the funding of through tax evasion and legislative tax policy capture.

We aren't human to them, we're capital livestock, which just makes our non-wealthy children capital veal.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/20/republican-child-labor-law-death

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

IMHO, the root of the issue is that the GOP has been dogmatically opposed to international law for decades now. They don’t like having to answer to anyone other than themselves. And you need 2/3rd of the senate to ratify.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

It's more than that, because Republican governors have been actively trying and succeeding in rolling back hard won child labor protection laws.

It's not just about not having the foreigns telling them what to do, it's because Republicans want children providing cheap labor to boost their stock portfolio. Here. Now.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Labor is only one of a multitude of things that this treaty addresses. Conservatives have been objecting to issues of sovereignty around its language on education, corporal punishment, criminal punishment, healthcare, sex and gender discrimination, etc.

It’s also worth noting that this treaty has carveouts to allow certain forms of child labor. Moreover, the US was able to ratify ILO 182 to agree to ban the worst forms of child labor.

I’m not saying child labor might not be a motivator for some of then conservatives opposed to ratifying this treaty, but there is a LOT more in there that US conservatives hate to relinquish control over, and when treaties are just focused on labor law, they have been easier to ratify.

This is more complex than just labor. The labor argument a fraction of the full story.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Capitalism isn't exclusive to the US. It's definitely a major breeding ground for the worst aspects of it, but it's hardly unique in that regard.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The US is the terrorist headquarters of capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

isnt something like 99.8% of the population financially incapable of holding capital/being called capitalists?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

That’s the dirty secret of capitalism: it’s actually just feudalism with a different set of qualifications for membership in the nobility.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Our brand of rigged market capitalism truly found it's stride under Reagan's deregulation giveaway. We've been exporting/advocating/bullying other developed nations to do the same ever since. There are tightly, tightly controlled, adequately taxed capitalist economies that focus on how REASONABLE capital incentive can benefit society (the point of any economy, that we've abandoned) that can work, like the Nordic model, but now we're coming for that too, and we'll do to them what we did to the UK and are doing to France.

It's an easy sell. A faustian bargain. You just need a few people in the right positions of power. "Hey, YOU can live larger. You can live like a modern pharoah. Just sell out your countrymen. Do you like yachts? How about yachts the size of cruise ships?"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

And Margaret Thatcher was doing her own disassembly of worker's rights. They enabled each other, but one wasn't wholly dependent on the other for their actions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

We don't have to coerce others directly, we appeal to the greed and powerlust of leaders of other markets, let their powerful do the coercion of their people and change their protections, and the global markets have a new workforce and resource market to exploit and extract value from. Everybody* wins.

Everybody that already holds power and/or meaningful capital anyway, and that's all that matters. Fuck the livestock.

One way or another, the global capital market must continue to grow/metastasize... on a finite world, with finite resources, and a sole, shared, COMMUNal environment we all rely on from one breath to the next. Yeah...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Capitalism, sure, but how about child labour in first world countries?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (3 children)

If that's literally your only metric, maybe.

If there's no child labor, then everything is a-okay in your book?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Oh you want more? How about:

number of medical bankruptcies?
Lack of workers rights?
The school to prison pipeline?
Lack of mental healthcare?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

It's a good start at least. That is for sure.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

all or nothing eh? last time i checked we could do more than one thing at a time

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

American opposition to the convention stems primarily from political and religious conservatives. For example, The Heritage Foundation considers that "a civil society in which moral authority is exercised by religious congregations, family, and other private associations is fundamental to the American order"

No surprise there

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The US barely ever ratifies treaties that require international oversight. It’s the same reason we have the UCMJ and not the Hague court.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Because America believes it's an exception and above everyone else.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

These high-minded treaties don't actually mean anything - there's no enforcement mechanism and countries with a much worse human-rights record than the USA have signed them without consequences. IMO it's better not to sign them than it is to pretend that signing does any good and lend unearned legitimacy to those other countries.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The treaty itself does not have any enforcement mechanism; however the US does. US courts recognize ratified treaties as having equal weight to laws passed the normal way Ratifying the Treaty would immediately make it federal law. The US has a robust enough legal system that the courts would the (over years of building up case law) determine exactly what that means.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

This.

A treaty is a three step process. Draft, sign, ratify. This made it to step two, not step three for the US.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

This perception arises from the fact that people think signing and ratifying are the same thing. They are not.

A treaty needs to be ratified to be legally binding, and ratification takes 2/3rd of the senate to OK it.

The executive branch signs international shit all the time, but they can’t get it through Congress. Which is why recent treaties lack teeth.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Ah yes the oft-used American Exceptionalist attitude of "we're too good to bind ourselves to treaties like this".

Tale as old as time. It's why the US isn't a member of the ICJ and many other international treaties. King's don't follow rules - they make them!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The US is a member of the International Court of Justice - every country in the United Nations is. Are you thinking of the International Criminal Court?

Other than that, my answer is "yes but that's not a bad thing".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Why is it a good thing?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

  1. The actions of an international court will inevitably be political.

  2. The countries that are the worst human rights violators will never voluntary accept the authority of the court.

In that context, why should the USA give other, potentially hostile countries power over itself? It might have been worthwhile if it meant everyone had to follow the rules but in practice it would just give countries opposed to US foreign policy a tool for interfering without giving the US anything useful.

(My general view is that the US has made many very harmful mistakes but the era of American hegemony has still been one of remarkable global peace and prosperity. Like democracy, it's the worst system except for everything else that has been tried. Now we're seeing serious challenges to this hegemony and if they succeed, the world will get worse for almost everyone, not just for Americans. So if you think the US does more harm than good, we're unlikely to come to an agreement.)

Edit: accidentally deleted, reposting.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The problem is that we need to for many reasons transition to an international order of democratic cooperation instead of economic and military domination. And if the US can never accept this kind of shared and cooperative approach foreign policy of everyone is going to be forever dragged towards this kind of zero sum bullshit we have at the moment. Even though it's obvious that foreign policy doesn't have to be zero sum.

Even if other countries are potentially less honest with their implementation of global treaties, even a relatively slow movement there and maybe a more thorough movement in the US makes everyone better off.

The only way to actually foster a cooperative relationship is to make yourself vulnerable, otherwise it's just coercion and power not cooperation. And yes if you get hurt too much maybe you'll have to leave again, but this pessimistic outlook from the get go is certainly never going to lead to the changes we obviously need.

How do we solve things that require global attentio and accountability, like climate change, with an increasingly hostile and isolationist country calling the shots on decisions about global economic matters.

Simply put if I want to live in a world somewhat resembling the current one in 60 years, American collapse or integration into global democracy is a necessity.

Also calling a country that has been at war for 80+% of it's history a protector of global peace seems a bit questionable. Similarly I don't think anyone can conclusively say that the US has done more or less harm than good. But by that same nebulous metric shouldn't China hold that same title, as well as the Soviets, the British empire, the Spanish empire,the Romans ?

I would expect almost everyone to feel more ambiguously about the later list than the US, but both the US and empires of the past are exactly what they've always been, a tool for those inside, especially the ones in power to increase their quality of life, while everyone outside gets to be exploited, integrated, subjected to rules that do harm, and be attacked, regime changed and so on. It's not actually the US that is a problem it's the US being a modern empire that's the problem.

That the US tries to be a liberal democracy doesn't really lessen it's status as an empire, especially if the powers at be largely prevent it's people to decide against the status quo of domination.

Almost by necessity the most powerful are the most harmful if there are no systems to prevent their harm, diffuse their power etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

  1. The actions of an international court will inevitably be political.

  2. The countries that are the worst human rights violators will never voluntary accept the authority of the court.

In that context, why should the USA give other, potentially hostile countries power over itself? It might have been worthwhile if it meant everyone had to follow the rules but in practice it would just give countries opposed to US foreign policy a tool for interfering without giving the US anything useful.

(My general view is that the US has made many very harmful mistakes but the era of American hegemony has still been one of remarkable global peace and prosperity. Like democracy, it's the worst system except for everything else that has been tried. Now we're seeing serious challenges to this hegemony and if they succeed, the world will get worse for almost everyone, not just for Americans. So if you think the US does more harm than good, we're unlikely to come to an agreement.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

acab and the u.s. is the worlds police force for hire. it tracks.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

So might it be actionable that Israel is violating this? Not that I actually expect anything will really happen if this is pursued.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

freedom ferda!

USA! USA! USA!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

Whatda phuk