Suppression of Family Rights

By Julian Fitzgerald, Leeds, UK

From: fried@aesops.force9.co.uk

To introduce a constructive note to this issue of denial of family rights, people reading this can go to www.familyroutes.org , read and sign the Declaration of Langeac (in five languages), with any comments they would like to make. This Declaration sets out basic human rights to families and children of having both parents.

So far, over the years I have been observing trends in Europe/North America, there is a gradual move towards recognizing that children have a right to both natural parents, whether separated or not.

What really shocks me is the aplomb with which legal and legislative bodies throughout Europe permit the ongoing human rights abuse involved in forcibly removing children from loving parents, by law. A person from Copenhagen queried the number of posts on this topic - there are hundreds of thousands, millions of parents and children throughout Europe who are suffering from this plague, involuntary estrangement figures between parents and children are HUGE.

The NCHR's Comments

Tens of thousands of children in Sweden and the Nordic countries - Finland, Norway and Denmark are exposed to "care" by the social services in our different welfare states. These children are invariably placed in foster homes that receive substantial incomes from the system. In fact, the foster parents and the social workers are the true wards of the social authorities. The children receive very little benefit from the system.

Instead, the children are exposed to mental trauma, physical and even sexual abuse in the foster homes. The foster parents and the social workers expose the children to brain-washing and they do everything to alienate them from their parents. Most of these children suffer from Parental Alienation Syndrome - PAS.

Also, the foster parents - with the aiding and abetting of the social workers - often change the children's names so that they will "fit in" with the foster family. These children are being stripped of their identity - which is a violation of Article 8 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Children who are deprived of their parents are violated in their basic Human Rights to respect for their private and family lives. These Rights are guaranteed by Article 8 of the European Convention and Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Is this necessary in a democratic society?

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