[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 22, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: March 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
    UNITED STATES SHOULD SIGN U.N. CONVENTION ON RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

  (Mr. SANDERS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, 171 nations have signed the U.N. Convention 
on the Rights of the Child. Only 19 have not--including the United 
States of America.
  Mr. Speaker, the United States is the only industrialized nation on 
Earth which has not signed the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the 
Child.
  Mr. Speaker, the United States today, at 22 percent, has double the 
rate of childhood poverty of any other industrialized country. Today in 
America, 5 million children go hungry; over 100,000 sleep out on the 
streets; 10 million kids lack health insurance; and we rank 19th in the 
world in infant mortality.
  Mr. Speaker, I am happy to tell you that President Clinton has 
recently informed me that he has taken the positive step of asking the 
Departments of Justice, State, and Health and Human Services to conduct 
a comprehensive review of the convention. Further, at a conference last 
week that I organized, Dr. William Galston, Deputy Assistant to the 
President for Domestic Policy, indicated that this task force would 
make a recommendation to the President this spring.
  I am delighted that we are finally making some important progress on 
this issue, and am cautiously optimistic that President Clinton, unlike 
his predecessor, will soon sign this treaty and send it to the Senator 
for ratification.
  Mr. Speaker, let us join the rest of the world and sign the U.N. 
Convention on the Rights of the Child. Future generations will remember 
us less for the number of nuclear weapons that we possess, for the guns 
and tanks that we build, than for the happiness and well-being of the 
most vulnerable and fragile members of our society, our children.

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