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Comment by sheepdestroyer | Hacker News Reader

At least the Games serve to shine light on Japan's refusal to respect UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child, despite ratifying it in 1994.

Japan's Law incites and rewards Child Abductions by giving sole custody to the first abductor. Judicial visitation decisions are not enforced.

By refusing to protect the fundamental Right of Children to access both their parents directly and regularly, as per the CRC, Japan is a massive and frequent Child Right violator.

In 2019, Japan Minister of Justice publicly and cynically qualified the CRC of "non-binding", and the European Parliament's resolution denouncing the violations of being "unfunded".

Is is estimated that between 150,000 and 200,000 new children each year, the majority Japanese, have this basic Human Right violated in Japan.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japan-cust...

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I don't think the games have shone a light on that at all, sorry. First I've heard of it.

It was written about in the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/d43090eb-e005-4042-8b7a-13ab00ac0...

Whole thing seems to be about the denied rights of parents, not children? Doesn’t mention what any child wants anywhere. Weird to dress it up as being about the children.

Children benefit to have both parents in their lives, especially when young and can not express consent. There are enough studies and exemples in every other developed countries where it's the norm that it's not a matter of opinion.

The UN's CRC is indeed about Children's Human Rights. The specific article in question being Art 9.3

Yet the story is 'man denied right to see children', not 'children denied right to see father'.

The oldest being 6, they don't have much agency. Are you trying hard to not understand?

The US does not respect these “rights” either.

And just because the UN says it doesn’t make it so.

Human Rights are Universal and Unalienable. But it's the fact that Japan chose to ratify the CRC treaty that "makes it so".

Human Rights as defined by the UN and Politicians are not necessarily Universal or Unalienable.

This does not mean I dispute that there are human rights. Politicians have every incentive to claim something as a right when it’s not.

For example, the UN could announce the newfound “Right to a Gun-Free Society.” Despite the name, it’s not Universal or Unalienable.

> Human Rights are Universal and Unalienable

Clearly not.

You can go to many places on earth, even major western countries, where people do not have these rights.

People always have those rights, no matter where they live, their religion, their cast or what not. That's the definition of Universal.

However, they are sometimes not respected and it's the duty of the international community to lobby against the perpetrators especially when they took the moral engagement to recognise them officially.

It not the wild west, there are voluntarily agreed upon international treaties that can be brought as a base for these discussions.

> People always have those rights, no matter where they live, their religion, their cast or what not.

Many people do not have these rights. This cannot possibly be a surprise to you?

> That's the definition of Universal.

We know. That's why they aren't universal rights.

> However, they are sometimes not respected

If you live under an authority that doesn't think you have these rights, then you don't have them.

Of course I do, even under a Human Right violating regime. Human Rights transcend local authorities. And this authority would be both wrong and illegitimate if it has endorsed those Rights by ratifying a treaty that defines them, and somehow doesn't "belive" in them as you put it.

This is a bizarre kind of double-think.

If someone the other side of the world tells you that you have the right to freedom of religion, but the authority you live under disagrees, and the people on the other side of the world don't do anything about it, then in what sense do you have the right?

You don't - it's meaningless.

If I say I have decided that you have the universal inalienable right to beer, but where you live doesn't agree, and I don't do anything about it either, then have I really given you that right? Of course not.

I think what you're saying is that you think people should have these rights. Great. But they don't in practice, and so they aren't universal.

The concept is not new, 232 years old now, it shouldn't be that strange to you.

The vocation of tyrants is to have their head cut at some point, more or less figuratively.

This whole thread started with you giving an example of how people don't actually have these rights.

So even you know they aren't actually universal or inalienable.

232 years of pretending people have rights that they demonstrably do not have.

You still continue to say that people having their rights violated means they don't exist. That's a demonstrably false and illogical statement. It's because people inherently have rights that they fight for them, and others take their side. Hence events like the French Revolution, the Abolition of slavery, or the Civil Rights Movement.

> You still continue to say that people having their rights violated means they don't exist.

Yes. What is the meaning of a right that nobody enforces?

It's just an aspiration, a wish, something you'd like to have or other people would like you to have. If nobody's enforcing it, it's not really a right. By definition.

> Hence events like the French Revolution, the Abolition of slavery, or the Civil Rights Movement.

These were fights to create rights. They didn't have them before.

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