Abandoning Children to Their Autonomy: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
![handle is hein.journals/hilj37 and id is 455 raw text is: VOLUME 37, NUMBER 2, SPRING 1996
Abandoning Children to Their
Autonomy: The United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child
Bruce C. Hafen*
Jonathan 0. Hafen**
In 1989, the United Nations General Assembly adopted, without a
vote, a new Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).' Within a
year, 130 nations had accepted the CRC,2 and the number now reaches
176.3
As approvals of international human rights treaties go, this is such
blinding speed that the CRCs widespread acceptance seems surpris-
ingly uncritical-especially for a convention that includes an unprece-
dented approach to the legal -and personal autonomy of children. Al-
though it restates many time-honored United Nations themes about
children, the new CRC would also arguably alter United States laws
regarding age limits, parental rights, and children's rights to expres-
sion, media access, privacy, and religion.4
Since American children's rights advocates took the lead in devel-
oping the CRC'S unique provisions for child autonomy, it is curious
* Provost and Professor of Law, Brigham Young University.
** Associate, Kimball, Parr, Waddoups, Brown & Gee, Salt Lake City, Utah.
We first became interested in children's rights over 20 years ago, when one of us was a young
law professor interested in emerging individual rights movements and the other was his seven-
year-old son, who thought he should have the right to vote. I know a lot more about Nixon
and McGovern than Grandma and Grandpa do, he said. This Article reflects our continuing
intergenerational dialogue about parents and children. We thank Eric Lind, Joi G. Pearson, and
Sherry Littler for research assistance.
1. Convention on the Rights of the Child, G.A. Res. 44/25, U.N. GAOR, 44th Sess., Supp.
No. 49, at 166, U.N. Doc A/441736 (1989) [hereinafter CRC].
2. Most published commentary on the Convention describes the number of countries that have
approved of' or adopted it without distinguishing between merely signing the Convention
and fully ratifying it. Of the first hundred or so countries that had signed it within its first year,
only about half had legally ratified it. The only obligation incurred by signing the Convention
is a State's promise to review the treaty with an eye toward future ratification. Cynthia P. Cohen
& Howard A. Davidson, Preface to CHILDREN'S RIGHTS IN AMERIcA: U.N. CONVENTION ON
THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD COMPARED WITH UNITED STATES LAw iii, iii-iv (Cynthia P. Cohen
& Howard A. Davidson eds., 1990) [hereinafter CHILDREN'S RIGHTS IN AMERI A].
3. U.S. Finally Agrees to Sign UN Accord for Children, CHI. TRIB., Feb. 12, 1995, § 1, at 22.
4. See infra part I.B.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/hilj37&div=20&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Abandoning Children to Their Autonomy: The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
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