because they need special care and protection that adults do not. Those leaders also wanted to make sure that the world recognized that children have human rights, too. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) was the result, and it was the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights – civil, cultural, economic, political and social. Sweden ratified the UN Declarations on the Rights of the Child in 1990.
Two articles within the Convention are particularly relevant when addressing parental alienation.
“1. States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference.
2. Where a child is illegally deprived of some or all the elements of his or her identity, States Parties shall provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to re-establishing speedily his or her identity.” (Article 8)
“1. States Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will, except when competent authorities subject to judicial review determine, in accordance with applicable law and procedures, that such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child. Such determination may be necessary in a particular case such as one involving abuse or neglect of the child by the parents, or one where the parents are living separately and a decision must be made as to the child's place of residence. . .
3. States Parties shall respect the right of the child who is separated from one or both parents to maintain personal relations and direct contact with both parents on a regular basis, except if it is contrary to the child's best interests.” (Article 9)
Now let’s look at why I believe Sweden’s common practice where it comes to divorce violates children’s rights.
I met Ebba when she was a little girl who showed me her favorite teddy bear and told me with joy that it was a present from her daddy Per, whom she longed for. Twenty years later, I spoke to her again. She had not had any contact with her dad since.
“When you will have children of your own,” I asked her, “They will ask about their maternal grandpa. What do you think about that?”
“I hope,” Ebba answered, “That mum will have a new husband by then, who can become grandpa. I´d never let my children see him alone. Never in my whole life.”
Ebba’s experience is typical of the sixty of my investigations of severe custody conflicts that I analyzed for my research project titled "The best interests of the child and the child´s human rights in severe custody conflicts." I presented nearly half of them in my book The Child´s Right to Family Life. 25 Swedish Case Studies of Parental Alienation (2012). Such systematic, critical, longitudal analysis of direct and indirect statements and documents demonstrates that for these children, loving relationships had been broken.
The adherence to the UN Conven-tion on the Rights of the Child through the Swedish law is increasingly discussed to present difficulties because of the current practice of determining what is in the “best interest of the child”. Let’s look at why this is the case.
Both police investigations and records of consulting psychiatrists on a growing number of disputed custody cases since 2006 demonstrate that one parent can take control over the child and influence that child to reject the other parent without any objective reason.
28 summer 2017 PSG
Sweden’s common practice where it comes to divorce violates children’s rights.