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	Vatican Urged to File Child Rights Report to Un SOS Children's Villages July 16, 2010 http://www.soschildrensvillages.ca/News/News/child-charity-news/Pages/Vatican-Child-Rights-UN-283.aspx 15/7/2010 - The Vatican has been urged by UN officials to submit its overdue report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. While it is often difficult to think of the Vatican as its own country, it is indeed one. And what’s more, it is a state party to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The CRC is the guiding piece of international law on how to deal with children both within and between borders. It is a cornerstone of international humanitarian law with the United Nations (UN) system. Chairwoman of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Yanghee Lee has been critical of the Vatican’s handling of sensitive child rights issues as they pertain to child sexual abuse allegations. The Committee oversees each country’s progress toward realizing the articles enshrined in the CRCs. Like the Universal Periodic Review programme that evaluates countries’ progress toward more general human rights, the Committee identifies challenges and next steps that countries must take to remedy infractions and severe violations of child rights. The Vatican is currently 13 years overdue to submit a report of what it has done to improve child rights within its jurisdiction, having not submitted a report since before it missed a deadline in 1997. The first and only report submitted was in 1995. The Caribbean country of St. Kitts and Nevis has also not submitted a second report. Countries in Oceania like the Cook Islands, Nauru, Niue, Tuvalu, and Tonga have been late in submitted their second reports, also due in 1997. As of last year, UN officials from the Vatican affirmed that the country’s report was “finalized as we speak” and that problems documented around the world by the clergy were taken very seriously and deemed to be of the utmost importance to Vatican leadership. Indeed the Vatican has today revealed its newly-issued “house rules” and protocol for dealing with child sexual abuse by its clergy. The victims of such abuses are often children with learning disabilities. Other forms of abuse and exploitation include the production of child pornography. These offences have been made more serious and are punished in the same way that explicit pedophilia is punished. Secondly, the statute of limitations has been lengthened from 10 to 20 years. Many have speculated that these revisions were motivated by the reminders Chairwoman Lee has sent to the Vatican, urging them to submit a report. At present, sexual abuse allegations are handled by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, previously headed up by the current Pope during his time as Cardinal. Monsignor Charles Scicluna is the Vatican’s prosecutor for sex crimes.
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