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Abandoning Our Children

By Benjamin D. Grizzle

In two weeks, the United Nations will host a special session in New York to discuss the state of children on a global scale. The three-day meeting will be a gathering of nearly one-hundred heads of state, first spouses and more than 1000 other delegates representing governments and NGO’s world-wide to discuss and debate the state of children in the world and set goals for improving their conditions in the future.

Various nations’ progress in the last decade will be measured against the “Convention for the Rights of the Child,” produced at the 1990 World Summit for Children. Of the 193 member states, only the United States and Somalia have yet to sign this covenant to guarantee “the best possible start in life for all children, a good-quality basic education for all children [and] opportunities for all children, especially adolescents, for meaningful participation in their communities.”

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The United States’ primary objections to attending this special session—the first international discussion about children in more than a decade—center on two primary concerns. Foremost is America’s unwillingness to cease executing people who committed crimes while they were children. The second reason is our unwillingness to report the true condition of America’s own children to the world. While the first reason may hold water, the second is certainly worthy of intense scrutiny.

If we want to be the international frontrunner on issues of human rights, why do we not—or more importantly why can we not—make ourselves the example that illustrates how children should grow up?

It is much more comfortable for us to point to children in India and Thailand who have beem sold into slavery for interest payments on family debt than to admit that 16.9%—one in six—American children today are growing up in poverty.

The Federal Poverty Line has hardly kept pace with changes in housing costs and inflation; a family of four is only considered poor if their income is less than $17,524 per year.

Certainly, we can agree that poverty is caused by a combination of social, structural and personal factors. But why are children being punished for the irresponsible decisions of their parents? And more important, why are children’s chances in the land of the American dream determined more by their zip code than by their character, intelligence or ability?

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