THE NCHR CELEBRATES INTERNATIONAL FAMILY DAY
|
The
world celebrates International Family Day on May 15. |
International
Family Day is about recognising the importance, the value of families in our
society. The family plays a crucial role in influencing our lives across so
many areas - including our health and our well-being. The family is the corner
stone of every society on Earth. However family is not allowed to play any
prominent role in the so-called welfare states of
Many of the problems with juvenile delinquency, mobbing and violence in our
society today can be directly attributed to the “modern” child-rearing practices,
the absence of mothers in the homes and the high divorce rate. Instead of
helping families to remain intact, the mainstream policy is to break up
families by all means, even by depriving children of their parents and placing
them in foster homes among total strangers - all under the motto of “the best
interests of the child”. These problems are particularly Swedish but also the
same in Norway, Denmark and Finland.
The best interest of the child however seems to be best served in the bosom of
the Family.
In 2005, the Swedish government initiated "A New Plan of Action for
Human Rights". The NCHR is
one of the organisations that have been invited to participate in this work. At
the meetings held at the Ministry of Justice in Stockholm on February 10 and
May 2, 2005, the NCHR has drawn focus to the issues of the unnecessary taking
of children into public care and placing them in foster homes, the total
absence of the rule of law in the administrative courts and the enormous waste
of billions of taxpayers money in the wake of these cases.
The contribution that the NCHR has made to the "New Plan of Action for
Human Rights" can be found in the Government Missive 2005/2006:95,
page 212 as follows:
"Finally we should mention in connection to the right to private
life, that a couple of NGO's have delivered statements concerning family life.
The
Nordic Committee for Human Rights has advanced their views that the taking of
children into public care and placing them in foster homes is harmful for
children and that the level of knowledge within the social services needs to be
strengthened. The organization uses the stories that former foster children
told about the miserable conditions in the orphanages and children's homes on
TV in December 2005 to support their views."
The NCHR was also invited to participate in the government conference on
February 7, 2008, concerning the promulgation of "A New Plan of Action
for Human Rights 2006-2009" and for the assessment of its
implementation. The NCHR's assessment was submitted on April 30, 2010 and it is
published on the NCHR's web site. We are therefore looking forward to seeing
concrete measures for the protection of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms
in
On May 2, 2007, 23 lawyers including a former judge at the Administrative Court
of Appeal in Gothenburg and a former prosecutor sent a letter to Sweden's
Chancellor of Justice, Goran Lambertz, because "Children are being taken
into care on arbitrary grounds". Legal security for children and their
parents and relatives is totally absent in public care cases. There are also cases
where covert adoptions occur. In 2008, former chief justice and Associate
Professor Mrs Brita Sundberg-Weitman published her book: "Sweden and
the rule of law in the 2000s", in which she has examined 169 notifications
of human rights violations that were made to the Ombudsman of Justice. Brita
Sundberg-Weitman's book confirms that there is a severe human rights deficit in
Sweden.
In 2006, several hundreds of former foster children, from the 1940's and
onwards, founded the organization "Stolen Childhood" for the sole
purpose of suing the different municipalities in Sweden, starting with
Stockholm, for the abuses that they suffered during their childhood and youth,
the lack of love and affection and respect for their private and family life:
basic human rights that the are guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the European Convention on Human
Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
The Swedish court system refused them the right to plead their case and unfortunately,
the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France declared their
complaint inadmissible.
A similar case in Norway met the same fate.
Sweden has had hundreds of care cases that have been exposed in the media since
the mid 1950s, for eg The Alexander
Aminoff Case, The Olsson Case,
The Götene Case and many, many others. The methods
that the system uses when taking children into care have become more and more
brutal - despite several European Court verdicts against Sweden. One
case of compulsory care and foster home placement that has international media focus
at present is The
Domenic Johansson Case. Domenic
Johansson was sitting on a Turkish Airliner on June 25, 2009, on his way with
his parents to settle in his mother's home country, India, when the plane was
boarded by armed police who removed him from the plane and delivered him to the
social workers who were waiting to take him into public care.
The forcible taking into care and placing of children in foster homes is done
under the mantra "the best interests of the child". However, the best
interests of children can often only be determined once their childhood has
fled. A destroyed or lost childhood can never be recovered.
The best interests of the child are best safeguarded in the Family, where there
is an ethical band ie love and care for the child there. It should be noted
that care of children in their own families is the only form of care that does
not receive state support in Sweden.
The governments of Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland have signed and ratified
the UN Declaration of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Article 12 of the
UN Charter guarantees everyone the right to respect for his private and family
life. Sweden's government has signed and ratified the European Convention on
Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Article 8 of the Convention guarantees
everyone the right to respect for his private and family life. Yet, Sweden,
Norway and Finland have been convicted in the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg for the violation of children and their families' Article 8 rights,
just because of forcible care and foster home placement of children.
The European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was
incorporated into Swedish law on January 1, 1995, by SFS 1994:1219. The Convention
is subsequently published in the Swedish law book - but without the preambule, which
explains the objectives that the creators of the Convention hope to achieve.
The UN Convention on the rights of the Child (UNCROC) is one of the latest in the
series of international conventions that have been signed and ratified by the
Nordic countries. Also the UNCROC, Article 16, guarantees children the right to
respect for their private and family life.
Despite the fact that Sweden, Norway and Finland have been convicted in the
European Court of Human Rights due to compulsory care cases, and although the
European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms is now incorporated
in the laws of the Nordic countries, cases of compulsory care and foster home
placements of children continue to increase and they are becoming more and more
brutal.
The governments and the authorities in the Nordic countries have to learn to
respect the basic Human Rights of their citizens and residents. There is no
greater abuse to children than separating them from their families and placing
them to live among total strangers.
Ruby
Harrold-Claesson
Ruby Harrold-Claesson
Attorney-at-law
President of the NCHR
Destroying the
Family: Swedish style