NO mention of the pornography industry that people use as entrees before main course. Why no mention? Any reasonable minded person can see the correlation. Also the mention that natural parents are more likely to abuse their own kids sound like a stupid dogma with little to no evidence. Step fathers, uncles, defacto's are far more likely to abuse a child than a natural parent. One minute the study shows that aboriginals who rarely live with their natural parents are far more likely to be abused than the rest of the community and then just to make sure the natural father gets his share of blame we have this stupid finding that contradicts what has just been said.

The talk of human rights in addressing these issues is contradictory. Many argue for the aboriginals to be allowed continue to collect the dole, watch pornography and live by cultural practices. Take any of these away and 'Human Rights' agencies scream. So you will need to take away one set of 'human rights' in order to implement another.

Society is bearing the fruits of secularism where young girls and boys are being sexualised and conditioned from a young age to be abused and to abuse. Strangely enough it was 'human rights' groups that demanded the freedom to do this. When we condone artist photographing nude young girls in the name of art what do we expect.

Unfortunately cultural 'human rights' are winning out over the rights of the children. This is also seen in the way we allow and promote the murder of the unborn children. Secularism is always very contradictory.

Previous posters:

What is difficult to assimilate with logic and usefulness in terms of the content of this article, is that it serves no practical purpose to follow down paths that the stand advocated by the ASCA organisation seems to recommend. I stated my points pretty accurately and clearly in my post, no point to repeat them.
As Sammut clearly pointed out in his article (in terms barely hiding his frustration at the stupidity of the current system, with its clear lack of success in achieving its stated aims) the rescue of children from abusive environments is failing dismally.

Futuristically, the same children of today arriving at the court of the Haig (if that is where it all gravitates) seeking justice from a charter on human rights would have been better served by a concentration by all with an interest in child welfare issues at this current moment.

It is also the “weeping and wailing” and general soft ego matrism approach to this issue that is compounding the failure. DOC’s in NSW, with their policy to reunite abused children with failed families (and in particular single mothers) demonstrates my stand. A better and more effective position is a hard ego patrism such as evidenced in the police force.

Child abuse is a crime and it is at that level intervention and conclusions should start and finish; we need law reform to strengthen the police position. The child must be given more credibility and support to report and to be listened to at the court level.
Reducing DOC’s. involvement in the final say of placement of abused children would be a huge step forward and urgently required.

Who needs state sponsored terrorism, when in Australia we have had state sponsored child abuse for 35 years. As a parent i was forced to watch helplessly while my children were being abused and DOCS, far from protecting my children refused to act on hard evidence and credible independent witnesses.

The system has been infiltrated by paedophiles who have been actively grooming hundreds of thousands children for abuse daily.

I also know of non corrupt DOCS workers being victimised.

Human rights law demands public debate about existing cultural patterns of private power, patterns that are so entrenched as to seem 'natural.' It works towards the increased visibility of private abuses by naming them as human rights abuse. In the case of child abuse and child sexual abuse, human rights law aims to give a voice to the abused child, not as an object belonging to parents and covered by parental rights, or family rights, but as a subject with individual rights of his and her own to protection from abuse.

If we are unable to grasp this as a society, and if we are unable to grant the dignity of human rights protection to our own children, then we have little cause to pontificate on the world stage about human rights of any kind in any other country.

It is reasonable to assume, given the figures, that the most common human rights abuses in Australia are those perpetrated by non-state actors upon children, rather than abuses perpetrated on individuals by the state. This ought to seriously alarm us.

The first thing we have to do is get the lesbian, feminazi paedophiles out of the child abuse industry. It always has been like putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank, just cut all funding to social talkers and shut down every neighbourhood centre ASAP.

"The growing international consensus on human rights stresses the right of women and their children to live free from violence.

Domestic and family violence can no longer be hidden as a private matter within families, nor sexual assault hidden as a personal shame beyond the reach of governments or the sanction of our communities. Violence against women and children violates the universal human rights instruments to which the international community has agreed through the United Nations."

greenmaps asks "When we say "human rights", do we really just mean "men's rights"?"

No greenmaps I don't think that's what's meant when the quote the author chose to include is considered.

That's one of the problems with much of the material purporting to be about protecting children. It often show signs of a gender agenda which has little to do with protecting children. If it's about human rights it's about the rights of all of us to live free of violence regardless of who perpetrates it. Continued focus on just the rights of women and children to live free from violence undermines that message.

I also get concerned that the discussions of human rights for children are used to create a context which is not always about doing the best job possible to nurture children. I agree that there are rights which should be protected but they are not the same set of rights as those which should apply to adults. Children are generally not capable of dealing with the same responsibilities as are expected of adults. Adults with responsibility for children carry some very specific responsibilities which they would rarely have for other adults (unless that adult is seriously incapacitated).

I'm left with the impression that much of what the author is talking of has more to do with issues other than the protection of children.

R0bert