US: Ratify Children’s Treaty | Human Rights Watch

US: Ratify Children’s Treaty

On 20th anniversary, Convention on the Rights of the Child Embraced by World but Not the US

November 18, 2009

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The United States' failure to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child is an embarrassment. It damages the US' reputation as a human rights leader and undermines its ability to improve the lives of children around the globe.

Jo Becker, children's rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch

(New York) - The United States should ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is supported by nearly every other nation in the world, Human Rights Watch said today. The United States and Somalia are the only countries that have failed to ratify the Convention, which was adopted 20 years ago, on November 20, 1989.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child became the most widely and rapidly ratified human rights treaty in history. The United States signed the Convention in 1995, but no US president then or since has sent it to the Senate for ratification.

via www.hrw.org