In June, both Israel and B’nai B’rith International blasted a totally politicized report by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child that condemned Israel for its treatment of Palestinians. The disgraced Committee then attacked the Holy See: it demanded that the Vatican turn over every document it has on priestly sexual abuse, and wants to know what the Catholic Church has done about discrimination between boys and girls; it is concerned about sexual stereotypes in school textbooks.
The Committee should be dissolved—its moral authority is shot. Of the 18 nations that comprise this entity, Freedom House rates half of them either “not free” or “partly free.” In other words, at least half of these nations have a record of oppressing its own people, many in ways that are positively shocking. And they have the audacity to point fingers at the Holy See?
If discrimination in school textbooks is a serious issue for this Committee, perhaps it can demand that one of its members, Saudi Arabia, stop depicting Jews as pigs and Christians as the enemy. When Muslims can freely convert to another religion without fear of being legally killed for doing so, then reasonable people may listen to what this body says. These member states have a lot of house cleaning to do, and the sooner they attend to their own human rights abuses, the better.
