Lies, Damn Lies and the UN

The UN committee on the rights of the child are concerned that we have insufficient rights for children in New Zealand. They imply that this is the cause of our “staggeringly high” infant mortality statistics. This would be impressive if we actually had high infant mortality stats, but we don’t. New Zealand’s infant mortality rate (from CIA stats) is 4.85 deaths per 1000 live births. This is not an especially good statistic, but is only marginally worse than the UK’s (4.69) and Australia’s (4.67). It is quite a bit better than the European Union’s (5.61) and America (6.14) and massively better than Russia (10.32) and United Arab Emirates (12.30) – the latter being the best of the middle eastern countries except, of course, Israel (4.17).

So, while the word “lackluster” comes to the MacDoctor’s mind when discussing our infant mortality statistics, the only staggering thing about them is that the UN seem so excited about them, when they are very unremarkable. Of course, the UN does not even vaguely address, to my mind, the most important New-Zealand-specific causes of  infant mortality which is our dearth of GP obstetrics and our sub-culture of feral parents who seem to murder a child every other week. No, the UN would like to waffle on about “rights” and “poverty”.

Poverty is usually a favorite topic in the UN – almost always juxtaposed against a “demand” for funding, in some way. Strangely, I recall a report from UNICEF on child poverty just before the 2005 election which said that 14.3% of children lived in poverty. Labour claimed “Working for Families” would change all that:

“Social Development Minister Steve Maharey said yesterday that the “Working for Families” package in last year’s Budget, including higher family support and a new “in-work payment”, would slash child poverty by 70 per cent when fully implemented in 2007.

“His ministry estimated last year that the package would reduce the proportion of children in homes earning under half the median income from 14.7 per cent this year to just 4.3 per cent by 2007.”

So when a UN official claims that “20 percent of children in New Zealand lived in income poverty”, in 2011, one must assume that either he, or Steve Maharey, are lying through their teeth. I opt for both.

In any case, income poverty is a marker for child abuse, not a cause. Otherwise we would see massive child abuse stats in developing countries, which we don’t (as long as one discounts child labour, which is a different type of abuse).

It would seem that all these concerns for child abuse, infant mortality and poverty are just a smoke-screen for the UN to get across its real agenda of child rights. While these “rights” are made out to be essential for combatting the ills besetting our children, there is no evidence that this is what they will achieve. After all, Singapore has no child rights at all and yet has the second lowest infant mortality in the world (2.32, right behind Monaco at 1.78), low rates of child abuse and fewer people in income poverty. One also has to question what benefits child rights might bring to any of the factor cited.

As far as I can see, the only results of children having documented rights, is that it will make it easier for the State to interfere in the lives of families and the way they bring up children. You get some idea of the scope of this with this quote:

“The committee commended the government’s anti-smacking legislation, but was concerned that it did not explicitly prohibit all forms of corporal punishment.”

All forms of corporal punishment for the purposes of discipline are excluded in the anti-smacking legislation. The UN committee therefore can only mean excluding trivial smacking and manual restraint. After all, in law you cannot restrain an adult against their will except to prevent danger to themselves or others. Clearly, the UN would like this principle extended to children, thereby rendering virtually all forms of discipline ineffective. Even “time out” often requires that you physically remove a child to the time out area. The UN would now like you to try and “persuade” a toddler to accept a time out. Good luck with that.

I would envisage that this politically correct nonsense would extend into all areas of family life, rendering parenting essentially impossible. It certainly would not be long before lawyers start assisting children to sue their parents because “they did not take them to the Zoo as they promised”. In case you think I am being hyperbolic here, think how much lawyers like the words “mental cruelty” and “breach of rights”.

The tragedy is that there is already plenty of legislation around to curtail bad parenting. Therefore the biggest lie being put forth by this UN committee is that Child Rights represent away of improving the lot of children. They do not. They merely represent a way of increasing state control of families.

Now that’s real child abuse.

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