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Children's Rights and Participation Main Instructor Marie-Louise M?lgaard The Family Vote in addition to the Citizen Vote The Most Important but Missed Article in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child Final Report by Mei, Feng 31 Mar. 2003 Rydsvagen 202A 584 32 Linkoping Tel: 013-26 08 86 Mobil: 0736-48 44 92 E-mail: mei.feng@telia.com Content I. Introduction 3 II. The Condition of Children 3 III. Low Fertility Rate even under the Immigrant's Support 3 IV. The Unfair Pension System to the Families with Children 4 V. The Best Interest of the Child vs. the Best Interest of the Family 4 VI. The Family Vote in addition to the Citizen Vote --- the Voting Rights of Children 6 VII. Discussion 7 VIII. Conclusion 8 IX. Sources 8 I. Introduction The "UN Convention on the rights of the child ( UNCRC )" want us to "Recognizing that, in all countries in the world, there are children living in exceptionally difficult conditions, and that such children need special consideration" (Preamble, UNCRC ). I personally want to criticize that the UNCRC still could not see through the 21th century's greatest problem of our next generation, therefore you are certainly not to expect that this convention could solve the problem of the children. In this paper I will first point out the crisis for the child in our present era, I want to emphasize that the problem of the child is originate from the problem of family, if the family problem could be solve by some political action then the problem of children will be solved naturally. I also try to compare the UNCRC's emphasizing about the "best interest of the child" to the " best interest of the family" to show that if the state parties try their best to fit the best interest of the family then most of the best interest of the child will subsequently achieve. Finally, I will use my utopian idea about familistatism of its derived method about family vote as compared to the nowadays citizen vote to try to solve the present situation of children. II. The Condition of Children "The largest category of poor in the Unites States are children. There are more than 14 and a half million children in the United States who live in poverty, while more than 5 million children live in families with less than half the poverty line income. Too young to carry their own cause, these children often suffer out of the limelight and in silence. These figures seem implausible in a nation of such enormous wealth. ................ One in five children in North America live in poverty." (Lindsey, 1997) As we could see that the description about the problem of children came from the super power of nowadays' earth. So we do not need to discuss about the present situation at the third world, Africa, India, Southeast Asia, South America, etc. We could also see that it is not just the problem of the children, but most importantly it is the problem of families. III. Low Fertility Rate even under the Immigrant's Support "During the second half of the 1990s, the country's population growth slowed dramatically. Childbirths declined sharply. The fertility rate ---- childbirths per woman ---- reached lower levels than ever (1,42 in early 1998). The annual population forecasts published by Statistic Sweden predict that these trends will continue. By 2015, the number of people aged 65 or older is expected to be 25 % larger than today, while the total population in other age categories will decline somewhat. This trend is not unique to Sweden. The number of old people in most countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will rise significantly over the next few decades." (Fact sheets on Sweden, May 2001) "Every third person in the world is under age 15. In several countries in Africa, nearly every other person is under age 15; while only one out of five people in Europe is under 15. In 2000, there were 1.8 billion children under age 15 in the world; 128 million were in Europe and less than 2 million lived in Sweden" (Children in the population, 2001) "Overall, children with foreign or mixed Swedish and foreign backgrounds comprise nearly one-fourth of all children (24 percent) ; this share is roughly the same for children of all ages." (Children in the population, 2001) The western selfish individualism is one of the main factor to this problem, it happens mainly in the west. But some industrial countries without supported by the welfare policy who learn from the west blindly have even worse situation, especially my own country R.O.C., Japan, Spain and Italy. Without the one fourth immigrant's support, Sweden will face more serious situation. The only practical solution to it is to increase the fertility rate. But it seems that seldom countries including Sweden have really faced with this problem. IV. The Unfair Pension System to the Families with Children "The size of the pension depends on the number of years a person has worked and on the size of his or her income. Full ATP is paid to people who have been working for at least 30 years" (Fact sheets on Sweden, April 1999) Why people do not want to have children? In my familism's opinion is that the families have not been encouraged practically, and the single and the childless couple should be discouraged as compared to the families with children. We could see for example from the present Swedish pension system, no matter ATP or the 'New general pension scheme', if we compared with those childless individuals, then besides the burden to raise the children, the families with children have less leisure time and take the risk of worrying about the kids all the time. And they lost lots of great opportunities to have more education and to make more incomes which could increase their pension. Child-raising is only an extra job to favor the society but without any benefit to oneself from the macroscopic point of view. And the children they have raised with great effort will say good-bye to them after they have grown up, for they say that they were raised by the child allowance, the free education and the medical insurance from the government, and they want independent and privacy to have their own family. And around one fifth of their salary will be taxed to give the pension of the other elders who never know them. "It is still the case, however, that 8% of elderly are unmarried and some 18% are childless (51% are married, 10% are divorced.......... Now, as before, public care provision takes over when the family can no longer manage or where there are no close relatives." (Fact sheets on Sweden, Oct. 2000) Except for the sympathetically special conditions, lots of the pensioned elders who cost more state caring service have never raised children when they were young. For they felt that raising children was boring as compared to have more time to have fun and to the realization of oneself. For they knew that there were always some foolish children-lover's children will pay their pension when they were old. And the most important thing is, the size of their pension is independent to whether they have kid or not. The Chinese traditional familism's concept of "raise children to protect my old age" seems so selfish as compared to the western nowadays pension system, which seems with great love to mankind, raising other people's parents. We could found that the Chinese survived for around 5000 years must have their wisdom. V. The Best Interest of the Child vs. the Best Interest of the Family "The analysis of the adoption acts 1917, 1944, 1958 and 1970 shows that the concept 'the child's best interest' does not have an objective or universal meaning. Today's opinion of what an adoption should involve is not self-evident, and it cannot be taken for granted that alternative opinions disregard children's interest" ( Lindgren, 2002) Here I want to criticize the questionable Article 3 of UNCRC --- "best interest of the child", in order to stress the important and unique role of family to support my solution of family vote. As we could see from the paper of Cecilia Lindgren that the "best interest of the child" is dependent on period and circumstance, and there is absolutely no definition to the "best interest of the child" which is universal. The best interest of the child seems always lie under the best interest of the state. One's interest is definitely decided by oneself without the help or threat of the others in nowadays democratic value. But how could a child known what his/her best interest is? Therefore it need the decision of the institution. We know also that the meaning of "child" is that it is not an adult. Consequently, the child means that he/she need to be taken care of (Preamble, UNCRC). So of course the family which the child born from has the responsibility to take care of them (1, article 18, UNCRC). In most cases, nobody has the right to define the "best interest of the child" except the child's family, for every family has the freedom of its own value (Preamble, UNCRC). So the most important job the state party should do is to protect and support the family and let the family protect their own children for seldom families do not consider the best interest of the child, unless the family has broken the law of the state (1, article 19, UNCRC). "The 'social structural' child, then, has certain universal characteristics which are specifically related to the institutional structure of societies in general and are not simply subject to the changing nature of discourses about children or the radical contingencies of the historical process" (James, Jenk, and Prouf, 1998, p. 33) We could see that the institution --- mostly family --- related to the child is the universal characteristic. So there is one thing which is definitely universal and unquestionable, that is, "the best interest of the family" which is decidable by the mature family member for they know exactly what their interest is, and this is the premises of "the best interest of the child". We could see also that most of the problems which we wanted to solve are because of the disintegration of the family, such as adoption, low fertility rate, children suffer from divorced single mother, etc. So there is one thing that is definitely clear, that is, the best interest of the family is certainly the best interest of the child. We know certainly that the "best interest of the child" is only needed under the dissolution of the family (article 20, UNCRC), and this is the worst tragedy that has ever happened. The traditional Chinese big family would let this possibility even less, for the relative of the child will take care of them naturally (article 5, UNCRC). But still I want to emphasize that if the state parties could face with the problem of the families and try their best to work for them (2, article 18, UNCRC), then we seldom have the chance to face with the questionable "best interest of the child". For having a family to take care of he/she is the only universal "best interest of the child", and all other "best interest of the child" is definitely unreliable. Further more, if a state party without having a peaceful family environment, then they surely have infinite problem connected to the child, and subsequently infinite fake "best interest of the child" need to be decided. VI. The Family Vote in addition to the Citizen Vote --- the Voting Rights of Children "Any discussion of rights arguably begins and ends with the right to vote. If you have it, all rights are achievable. Without it, whatever rights you have are dubious. As has been frequently articulated by the Supreme Court, “no right is more precious in a free country than that of having a choice in the election of those who make the laws under which…we must live. Other rights, even the most basic, are illusory if the right to vote is undermined.” The Court recognized voting as a fundamental right because it is the foundation for and springboard to all other rights. ........... Every extension of the voting franchise in American history has been met with resistance. Whether landless frontiersmen, freed slaves, women, immigrants, or the young, those already enjoying the franchise have warned that the prospective voters lacked the competence and commitment to the community necessary for responsible electoral participation. Gradually, however, suffrage has broadened to the point where it is now a right inherent in citizenship, rather than a privilege based on wealth, race, or gender. In her very timely and relevant article, What Ever Happened To Children’s Rights?, Martha Minow bemoans the failure of the children’s rights movement and lists as the first cause of failure, the fact that children do not vote and their voice is not adequately represented. What Minow intuits is that without the vote children encounter a deaf judicial ear, a blind legislative eye, and a dumb executive voice in their plea for greater rights. It is a hallmark of our rights history that unless moved by extraordinary events, overwhelming opposition, or confronted with incontrovertible evidence, rights are not granted simply because it is the right thing to do." (Children and the most essential right) "Fr?gan om barns r?str?tt har diskuterats i 20 ?r i Sverige. Men den stora politiska debatten har uteblivit. Diskussionen startade omkring 1980 med en artikel skriven av J?rgen Weibull som d? var professor i historia i G?teborg. Fem ?r senare gjorde barnl?karen Berndt Eckerberg, ett inl?gg p? DN-debatt. Rubriken var ”L?t Barnen f? r?str?tt”. Senare samma ?r gjorde Svenska barnl?karf?reningen en hemst?llan till regeringen om att r?str?tt f?r barn skulle analyseras. ........ R?str?tt f?r barn skulle inneb?ra att barnens f?r?ldrar f?r r?sta f?r dem tills de uppn?tt den ?lder d? de blir r?stber?ttigade. Det ?r framf?r allt tv? huvudargument som f?rts fram f?r att barn b?r f? r?str?tt Det f?rsta ?r att alla m?nniskor har lika v?rde och att barn ?r m?nniskor. Det andra argumentet ?r att barnens och barnfamiljernas st?llning skulle st?rkas om barn fick r?str?tt. D? skulle bland annat skolan, barnh?lsov?rden och barnomsorgen f?rb?ttras. Att denna f?r?ndring skulle intr?ffa om barn fick r?str?tt h?nger samman med att partierna skulle g?ra andra prioriteringar f?r att f? framg?ng vid valen. Resultatet skulle enligt detta syns?tt bli en rimligare balans mellan olika generationers politiska krav och ?nskem?l. Politiken skulle bli mer inriktad p? morgondagens problem och mindre p? de ?ldres krav p? pensioner, ?ldreomsorg och dylikt." (Dahlberg, 2001) We could see that there are already a lot of people know that the best medicine to solve the problem of child is to give them the voting right. Most of the advocators simply ask for the lowing of the voting age, and very few of others think about to let the child's parent to vote for them. The former will always face with the problem of lowing age and lowing and they will never know what is the limit of the suitable voting age, 20? 19? 18? or even 12? However although the latter have better solution to child's problem but they still face with the problem whether the mother or the father should vote for the child, and under which age should let the child vote for themselves in order not to disturb their independence! Both of them need the theory and practical method for their subject to be more persuasive. In my Chinese point of view, all their standpoints are base on the western individualism ideology of citizen vote, they always consider that the country is assembled by individual, and only the citizen with cogitation could vote. The traditional Chinese concept do not have the idea of citizen, they thought that the state is composed of families, that is to say, the family is the fundamental unit of the state, if the families are peace then surely the state will be prosperous. So family or even the clan is the most important unit of the state and their members. Therefore my idea of the familistatism indeed is a good theory for their conflict dilemma, that is, the family vote in addition to the solely citizen vote. (Mei, 2003) Chinese has an old saying: 'three workers are better than a talent', it means the individual's decision is always not so considerate than the group's. In other words, family's decision under meeting and other democratic procedure must get more multi-aspect considerations than individual. Many matureless thinking would be diminished under family members' discussion, that's the reason we have many family meetings at big and prosperous families in ROC. It is a good democratic education for ordinary people, it is also a good training for a leader at any sector. Every human being has their right at the state, why shouldn't children vote for the right of their own. If they could not easily express their opinions, then the family who take care of them should decide for them. The more the members, the married couples and the generations in a family, the more voting figure this family should have than the individual. That is the real equality for family have members such as the children and the disabled, for they take much more responsibility than individual for the society. Their consideration include the fundamental interest of different sexes and different generations, and this is the basic structure of a stable society, so how could their opinions be neglected compared with the single individual who cared only oneself. And the consequence of this action would surely make the politician take every effort to support the welfare of the families with elders and children. and the turnout of the election will very possible increase too. VII. Discussion Finally, I still want to emphasize once again that the individualism western culture of democracy, education, equality, individual private property, science, etc. are the underground for the realization of the future family vote, and that is also the reasons why the east is weaker than the west in these latest few centuries. However, the weakness of eastern world doesn't mean that they don't have anything that should not be learned by the west especially when some achievements of Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc are the evidence too. As we could see that there are no perfect method, and all of the methods has their merits and drawbacks, but still we shall try to looking for a best suited way to our own society. And I suggest the reform to the existing situation in stead of a completely revolution, for you could not avoid and even disgust your own tradition. You just need to look for the sick places of your society, and search for the best medicine to cure it. But the saddest point is that, the radical Chinese almost completely distrust their own glorious culture, just learn everything from the West. Especially the easiest learned sick places such as homosexual, divorce, etc. But to the exact essence of western culture of education and democracy, it seems that it is very hard to let them fully understand it. As for the West, they are too proud to learn from the East, some of them even deem themselves as the essence of civilization, against them means against civilization. The pride of them let them totally forget their barbarian ancestors as compared to the civilize East just several hundred years ago. VIII. Conclution "One could imagine the consequences for any particular group if they lost their right to vote. Their interests would depend on the good will and sympathy of others. Perhaps their rights would be protected by the courts. But in very real terms, their interests and needs would rapidly fall in importance among elected officials." (Lindsey, 1997) The policy of family vote will definitely amend the present unfair to the families with children, for more voting figure means more power. The politician will of course try to modify the pension law, increase the child allowance, housing allowance and parental benefit etc. to benefit the families with more children. When the unfair situation gone, the fertility rate should be arisen, and Sweden will no longer face with the danger of ethnic elimination, and the immigrant will be less too. As for the details and practical method of family vote of course need to have more reseach on it, but you could feel the fundamental democratic spirit in it is really better than the present dilemma under the citizen ideas. We will also face with many drawbacks of this action, such as dictatorship in the family, careless political concern for some family member, the equivalance of gender, the unbalance between generations, etc that must be solve by us later. But I still want to emphasize that the western citizen vote have already been amended for hundreds time for these few hundreds years, if the family vote also have such chance to amend, then its perfection will certainly acheived somedays later. IX. Sources "Children in the population", Statistics Sweden and others, from the teacher "Children and the most essential right" http://www.youthrights.org/articles/mostessentialright.pdf "Fact Sheets on Sweden", The Swedish Institute "UN Convention on the Rights of the Child", Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 Nov. 1989 and entered into force on 2 Sep. 1990 Dahlberg, Carina; Feb. 2001, "F?r vi ett barnv?nligare och mer demokratiskt samh?lle om barnen f?r r?str?tt?", Ume? universitet, Pressmeddelande, http://www.info.umu.se/press/Press/297.shtml James, Allism; Jenk, Chris; and Prouf, Alan; 1998, "Theorizing Childhood" Lindgren, Cecilia; 2002, "What is 'in the best interest of the child' ? Notions of biological and social kinship in Swedish child adoption policy 1917-1970", extracted from "Uppv?xt, familjeformer och barns b?sta, om familjeliv som offentlig angel?genhet och vardaglig praktik", Instituet f?r Framtidsstudier och tema Barn, Link?ping universitet, 2002 Lindsey, Duncan; 1997, "Why Children Should Have a Vote", Child Welfare Review, University of California, Los Angeles, http://www.childwelfare.com/kids/kidsvote.htm Mei, Feng; Jan. 2003, "Familistatism vs. Welfare state, an Utopian Idea of the Family-based Welfare State", Essay to the course "Nordic Culture", Linkoping University, Sweden |
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