(Originally posted in Daily Kos.)

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most comprehensive treaty on children’s rights. The convention has been ratified by nearly every country in the world, except for the United States. The convention would fill current gaps in U.S. laws, and provide all children in America with the same robust protections that children in 193 countries are already entitled to.

Kevin is serving the rest of his life in prison without the opportunity for release for a crime he committed as a child. He’s not alone. Each year in the U.S., children as young as 13 are sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison without any opportunity or hope for release. Approximately 2,570 children are sentenced to juvenile life without parole in the U.S. We are the only country in the world where children are serving such cruel sentences — and we stand alone with Somalia in failing to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

When we look to the CRC, a pragmatic guide for creating a better and more stable world, we see that sentencing children to life without parole clearly denies young people the opportunities they are due.

Nurturing communities and access to a full range of opportunities has a significant impact on children. It’s common sense. Children represent our future, and we all have a stake in their development by creating and sustaining programs that support them and providing them access to a full range of opportunities throughout their childhood.  We can do much better, and we must. We must ensure that the most vulnerable members of our society — our children — receive fair sentences for the crimes they commit and that they are given an opportunity for rehabilitation.

The sentence of life without parole violates not only the CRC’s  prohibition of life sentences for juveniles, but also violates the consideration of the needs of children — concepts outlined explicitly within the treaty.

When we look at access to education, we’re seeing another disturbing trend taking place here in the U.S. We are falling behind when it comes to the treatment of our children in schools.

In 2008, the ACLU's Human Rights Program and Human Rights Watch released a comprehensive analysis that found that children in Texas and Mississippi ranging in age from 3 to 19 years old were routinely physically punished for minor infractions such as chewing gum, talking back to a teacher, or violating the dress code, as well as for more serious transgressions like fighting.

Corporal punishment, which is actually legal in 20 states, typically takes the form of "paddling," during which an administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly on the buttocks with a long wooden board. As a result of paddling, many children are left injured, degraded, and disengaged from school.

We found that some students are targeted more than others. Students with disabilities and students of color are punished at disproportionately high rates; this hinders a fundamental right to education and freedom from discrimination.

For example, African-American girls in Mississippi are 2.2 times as likely as Caucasian girls to be paddled, a number that exceeds rates in other states. There is no evidence that these students commit disciplinary infractions at disproportionate rates.

When we examined the corporal punishment of students with disabilities – ranging from paddling, to throwing children into walls — we found that the punishment could actually worsen these students' medical conditions and undermine their fundamental right to an education.

Many parents noted that their children with autism became more fearful or angry after receiving corporal punishment, especially around their schools. Consider the story of Anna M.’s son, a 7-year-old with autism in Florida. He changed after he was restrained and received corporal punishment. His mother told us:

He’s an avoider by nature, before he was never aggressive. Now, he struggles with anger; right after the incidents he’d have anger explosions... He would never leave my side. He had major nightmares, screaming. He wouldn’t go to Walmart, anywhere. He’d say ‘we’re going to run into him [the person who administered physical punishment].’

Students with disabilities— like all students —need safe, secure school environments in which they can effectively learn. No child should be hit, especially the most vulnerable. Corporal punishment cannot function as part of that environment: it causes pain, injury, and degradation of the student’s medical condition. And it is ineffective.

There are positive solutions that create effective school cultures. Positive behavioral interventions and supports are proven to allow educators to respond to each child, teaching them why what they did was wrong and how they can correct their behavior. Creating caring school climates and positive approaches to discipline guarantees the human right to education for all young people in the United States.

Looking to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, we see clearly the right thing to do. Every child has the right to be free from any form of physical or mental abuse, and every country should “take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation.” The child rights treaty recognizes the “right of the disabled child to special care” which should “ensure that the disabled child has effective access to and receives education ... in a manner conducive to the child’s achieving the fullest possible social integration and individual development. The treaty also expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability. It just makes sense.

On this day, the 20th anniversary of the child rights treaty, the ACLU is examining how we’re faring in light of a global strategy for creating a better and more stable world. Providing children access to a full range of opportunities throughout their childhood is effective and essential. We just can't afford to let another 20 years pass.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most comprehensive treaty on children's rights. The convention has been ratified by nearly every country in the world, except for the United States. The convention would fill current gaps in U.S. laws, and provide all children in America with the same robust protections that children in 193 countries are already entitled to.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child provides a framework for thinking about how we can best educate and care for our youth. It calls upon us to provide young people with the information and skills they need to lead healthy, productive, and peaceful lives. These are core principles and goals we should all be able to rally behind. Yet, we have failed for so long to secure a world built on these ideals.

An important piece of realizing such a world includes ensuring young people's health, including their sexual health, and how we prepare them to be healthy adults. For too long, our government has financed and pushed an abstinence-only-until-marriage approach to scare young people into not having sex and to push a social agenda that promotes discrimination against LGBT communities and women. This push has been in full-swing, both domestically and internationally, for more than a decade. We have been disseminating misinformation about birth control, condoms, and the role of sexuality in our lives. And we've been exporting a failed and unjust social policy that leaves young people bereft of the tools and skills they need to avoid unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection and to build supportive relationships and intimate human connections.

The great news is that we currently have the opportunity to stop this failed experiment and to get the country on track when it comes to teaching young people about their sexual health. In his fiscal year 2010 budget, President Obama took a critically important first step by removing abstinence-only programs. In addition, he called for a new initiative to fund evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs. This is a good sign that there's political will to get things moving in the right direction.

We now need to make sure that Congress follows the president's lead. Just yesterday morning, Newsweek's blog reported that the Senate health-reform bill, released last night, restores some funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programming. Ugh! Don't we have enough to worry about when it comes to health care reform and efforts to cut off women's access to abortion coverage in the proposed health insurance exchange?

Help us stop Congress from reviving failed abstinence-only programming. Don't allow young people's sexual health to continue to be a political battleground. On this 20th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, let's uphold its core principles and get to work on securing the health and lives of young people at home and abroad.

Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most comprehensive treaty on children's rights. The convention has been ratified by nearly every country in the world, except for the United States. The convention would fill current gaps in U.S. laws, and provide all children in America with the same robust protections that children in 193 countries are already entitled to.

During this week in which we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), it is important to give some thought to those of our children who most need the protection of the convention. Under the convention, children may not be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In addition, children who have violated the law must be treated in a manner consistent with the child's dignity that takes into account "the desirability of promoting the child's reintegration and the child's assuming a constructive role in society." Under the CRC, "the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child … shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time."

Unfortunately, ill-considered social policies too often result in children committed to juvenile facilities in this country not receiving the treatment they need. A number of studies have shown that children who are locked up are more likely to commit future criminal acts than children who are kept in the community. Given that the United States now locks up 93,000 kids in juvenile facilities across the country at a cost of $5.7 billion each year, we need a better way.

That better way has to involve a massive reduction in the number of children that we lock up. For those who are confined in juvenile facilities, the "Missouri model" points the way. In contrast to traditional juvenile facilities, in Missouri's system children live in cottage-style dormitories that hold 10 to 15 children. Two facilitators work with the children in a well-thought-out program that focuses on personal change to allow youth to turn their lives around, in a safe and humane environment. The youth receive educational services and job training, but also help with social and emotional functioning. Each kid has an advocate assigned to them who assists with the process of reintegrating the child back into his or her community. The results are a dramatic improvement from traditional juvenile confinement, as fewer than 10 percent of youth released from the program are found to have committed a new crime within three years of release.

The ACLU's National Prison Project is involved in two cases in which our litigation is pushing for system-wide juvenile reform. In the District of Columbia, we filed a motion asking the court to appoint a receiver to overhaul the totally dysfunctional Youth Services Agency. Ultimately, D.C. responded by appointing Vincent Schiraldi, a real reformer, as head of the agency. Schiraldi has completely reorganized the agency — now called the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services — and is replicating the "Missouri Model" in D.C. As a result, a new state-the-art facility for committed children opened in May 2009, and the population of committed children has fallen dramatically. Similarly, in Rhode Island, our litigation has led to new facilities and a new philosophy that has cut the number of youth committed to the juvenile system and substituted positive programs for the old practice of placing kids who break facility rules in isolation.

Finally, under the CRC, no "life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offenses committed by persons below eighteen years of age." Whether such sentences impose cruel and unusual punishment barred by the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is now under consideration by the Supreme Court. While we are hopeful that the Supreme Court will strike down these sentences, it remains important to fight them in those states that still allow this practice until it is ruled unconstitutional.

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

It seemed to be business as usual Wednesday, as we filed into the courtroom at Guantánamo Bay for Afghan Mohammed Kamin's pre-trial hearing before the military commission here. Attorney General Eric Holder simultaneously was testifying before Congress that the decision, announced last Friday, to transfer the five accused 9/11 co-conspirators to federal court to stand trial, represents a step closer to closing Guantánamo (even as President Obama announced that his administration will miss its deadline to do so).

The decision to transfer some cases to federal court was indeed an important step forward toward restoring due process and the rule of law, but it is diminished by the continuation of the discredited military commissions. Today the military commissions hurtled on.

On Friday, the Attorney General also announced that five Guantánamo detainees will face trial before military commissions. Attorney General Holder said nothing about where Mohammed Kamin's case will be tried, but Kamin was scheduled for a pre-trial hearing today before the military commission. Until the judge sat with the prosecutors and Kamin's defense lawyers yesterday for a status conference, we did not know whether today's hearing would proceed as scheduled.

Shortly after today's hearing began, Kamin's defense lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Richard Federico, voiced his uncertainty about the status of his client's case. Lt. Cmdr. Federico announced that because the Attorney General had made no mention of Kamin's case on Friday, and since he had received no notification about whether Kamin would be tried before the discredited military commissions or transferred to federal court to stand trial, he was unsure what was to happen to his client's case. Lt. Cmdr. Federico went on, "But the fact that we are standing in this courtroom is an indication that the government intends to proceed forward" with the case before the military commission.

Prosecutor Maj. Michael Wallace answered that no decision had been made yet about whether to transfer Kamin's case to federal court, but he noted, "essentially today's hearing maintains the status quo."

And that's exactly the problem.

The Obama administration is creating a tiered justice system: one that maintains the status quo of a discredited military commissions system plagued by delay, confusion and seemingly endless legal challenges; and the other, our tried-and-true federal courts, which have a proven record of handling complex terrorism cases. (Our federal courts have convicted 195 defendants of terrorism charges since 2001, in contrast to the three convictions secured by the military commissions since 2001.)

Continuing the military commission proceedings against Kamin meant more of the same of what we've seen in other proceedings here: uncertainty about the rules, which the government is making up as we go along (even now, the Department of Defense is preparing new rules for the military commissions), and a judge frustrated by delays in the prosecution's failure to hand over fundamental evidence to the defense.

The usual chaos was compounded by uncertainty over where Kamin's case will ultimately be tried. Kamin is accused of a single crime, providing material support for terrorism—an offense that should have been prosecuted in established federal courts. While a military commission conviction for material support for terrorism could possibly be overturned on appeal because such a crime is not a traditional war crime, the offense is covered by the federal criminal law. And federal courts have a proven track record of obtaining convictions for material support for terrorism in numerous cases since 2001.

The discredited military commissions should be abolished and Kamin and the rest of the Guantánamo detainees should be transferred to federal court. It's time to break from the status quo.