It was the first international treaty to integrate all human rights in reference to children, encouraging them to participate in family, cultural, and social aspects of life.
The Convention also addresses issues concerning education, health care, juvenile justice, and the rights of children with disabilities.
First, the president or their representative would negotiate, agree, and sign a treaty, which would then be submitted to the United States Senate for its "advice and consent".
[11] Many organizations in the United States support ratification of the Convention, including groups that work with children, such as the Girl Scouts and Kiwanis.
We will achieve this through mobilizing our diverse network to educate communities on the Convention, thereby creating a groundswell of national support for the treaty, and by advocating directly with our government on behalf of ratification.
"[17] Some Americans oppose the CRC with the reasoning that the nation already has in place everything the treaty espouses, and therefore it would make no practical difference.
"[20] They express concern about "sovereign jurisdiction, over domestic policymaking" and "preserving the freedom of American Civil Society",[21] and argue that the actual practice of some United Nations Committees has been to review national policies that are unrelated, or at most marginally related, to the actual language of the Convention.
[23] Article 37 of the Convention prohibits sentencing children under 18 years old to the death penalty or to life imprisonment with no opportunity for parole.
He argues that "Supreme Court case law has provided that a combination of parental rights and religious liberties provide a broader right of parents and private schools to control the values and curriculum of private education free from State interference.
[16] Smolin, otherwise a proponent who urges U.S. reservations to the convention, argues that Article 5, which includes a provision stating that parents "provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention",[35] "is couched in language which seems to reduce the parental role to that of giving advice".
[13] Child advocacy groups draw attention to the fact that treaty ratification would stop parents from sending their children to military schools at young ages.
They argue that military indoctrination of children is unnatural and it cements a world view of war, violence, and soldiering at a young age.
[36] Geraldine Van Bueren, the author of the principal textbook on the international rights of the child, and a participant in the drafting of the Convention, has described the "best interest of the child standard" in the treaty as "provid[ing] decision and policy makers with the authority to substitute their own decisions for either the child's or the parents' ";[37] Smolin argues that the objections from religious and political conservatives stem from their view that the U.N. is an elitist institution, which they do not trust to properly handle sensitive decisions regarding family issues.
This anti-adultist artistic collaboration was a form of youth-adult partnership undertaken at Haring's studio in New York City and coincided with, and responded to, the drafting of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) at the United Nations General Assembly, also in New York City.
The UN General Assembly adopted the Convention and opened it for signature on 20 November 1989 (the 30th anniversary of its Declaration of the Rights of the Child).