The city, state and federal government have the continual responsibility to respect the human rights of children and young adults. This obligation is heightened in the public school system, where youth are fully dependent on the State to provide a secure and humane environment. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. formally recognizes, guarantees the right to security for everyone and establishes limits on arrest and detention. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child elaborates the human rights of youth. It has been signed and ratified by every country in the world except for the U.S. and Somalia, but is recognized as legally binding in U.S. courts because of its near universal recognition. This convention includes safety and dignity as human rights in the school environment. The human rights to safety and dignity are not exclusively limited to the relationship between students. They also refer to the school environment, which must be child-friendly and humane, promote non-violence and allow children to develop. Furthermore, schools must respect the right to dignity in administering discipline.
The knee jerk response of flooding public schools with armed police officers and creating an atmosphere that resembles prep schools for prison instead of higher education is not sound public policy and violates the human rights of the city’s youth. These extreme measures will not improve the quality of education, dignity, opportunity and well-being in our neighborhoods. It is a shortsighted reaction that has refused to inform itself by the disastrous consequences of the “tough on crime” practices of the last three decades that are now widely decried because they have exacerbated inequity, discrimination and insecurity - by creating a pipeline of the poor, the young, the brown and the black from our communities into the state’s prisons. Why is the City’s government so determined to repeat these mistakes by extending this brutal experiment to children from poor communities in public schools?
The best way to secure the safety and dignity of children in schools is to promote greater respect for their human rights, not by establishing a criminalized atmosphere in the place where they are supposed to learn and grow. It is no coincidence that these so-called “dirty dozen” schools are in the city’s poorest districts. The students attending them suffer from inadequate housing, lack of access to health care, poor nutrition, unemployment and family financial insecurity. These are all internationally recognized human rights violations. The fact that these interrelated economic and social rights are denied to many of the students is the underlying problem that must be addressed in order to improve the prospects for their futures. These are the real culprits that have hampered their advancement and caused the school environment to progressively degenerate. Heavy policing, arrests for minor infractions and creating an even more hostile school atmosphere sets youth up for failure. The city should dismantle barriers to learning not through stronger and more aggressive coercion but by examining the bigger picture of the economic and social rights violations that children in these twelve schools suffer from.
Article 28(2) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child says that “States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure that school discipline is administered in a manner consistent with the child’s human dignity.” Yet, New York City has initiated a policy in these twelve schools that makes young people perpetual law enforcement suspects, subjecting them to intrusive surveillance and stripping them of liberty and dignity.
Article 37(b) says “States Parties shall ensure that: No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention, or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity of the law, and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.” Yet, New York is adopting “zero tolerance”-inspired tactics that make arrest and detention the first resort.
Finally, Paragraph 8 of General Comment 1 to Convention on the Rights of the Child it says, “Children do not lose their human rights by virtue of passing through the school gates. Thus, for example, education must be provided in a way that respects the inherent dignity of the child and enables the child to express his or her views freely… and to participate in school life. Education must also be provided in a way that respects the strict limits on discipline… and promotes non-violence in schools…” Schools must be “child-friendly in fullest sense of the term and… consistent in all respects with the dignity of the child.”
Human rights support education reform policies that comprehensively address the interrelated rights that impact a child’s ability to thrive in school. Mayor Bloomberg and the city’s education policymakers must end this misguided and short-sighted attempt to police their way into a better school environment. They must restore dignity to the children in our public schools and look to education reform models that respect human rights.
Sharda Sekaran
Justice 4 Youth Coalition Press Conference
February 18, 2004