17 Winter 2015-2016 ntroduction In October 2013, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution and recommendation on the Child's Right to Physical Integrity (the "PACE Resolution"),1 which inter alia expressed concern that ritual male circumcision violated children's rights protected by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC);2 urged Member States to consider forbidding the practice on children who were not old enough to consent and recommended inclusion of the child's right to physical integrity into relevant Council of Europe standards. In an earlier article,3 I argued that this resolution illustrates some of the pitfalls of children's rights discourse and highlights the risks of self-proclaimed children’s rights advocates taking a monolithic, over-simplistic approach to rights analysis. I also exposed the defects in the process of the passing of the PACE Resolution and questioned which institutions should have the authority to make value judgments concerning children’s rights. In September 2015, the PACE adopted a new resolution on the Right to Freedom of Religion,4 which urges States to come to "reasonable accommodations" in relation to controversial religious practices, so as to ensure effective equality in exercise of the right to freedom of religion. The resolution specifically states that States should "provide for ritual circumcision of children not to be allowed unless practiced by a person with the requisite training and skill, in appropriate medical and health conditions," in order to ensure compliance with the rights of the child. The clear implication of this statement is that ritual circumcision is not a human rights violation, provided that it is carried out by a qualified person in proper conditions. Whilst the latest resolution of the PACE appears to put an end to the efforts of anti-circumcision activists to use the Council of Europe5 as a vehicle to promote their agenda, it seems likely that the argument that the practice violates the rights of the child will continue to be used in attempts to get ritual male circumcision banned in individual countries. Accordingly, this article will focus on exposing the flaws in the claims that brit milah (Jewish ritual circumcision)6 violates children's rights and explaining how the practice actually promotes various rights of the child. By way of background, I will first outline briefly the religious and medical aspects of brit milah. The Religious Precept The origin of the practice of neonatal circumcision in Judaism7 is in the Divine command to Abraham in the following Biblical passage: [You shall] keep My covenant, [you] and [your] seed after [you] throughout their Children’s Rights and Brit Mila I Rhona Schuz 1. Resolution 1952 (2013), Children’s Right to Physical Integrity, Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe, available at assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-DocDetails-EN. asp?fileid= 20174&lang=EN&search=MTk1Mnx0eXBlX3 N0cl9lbjpSZXNvbHV0aW9u# (last visited Nov. 11, 2015). 2. Convention on the Rights of the Child, Nov. 20, 1989, U.N.T.S. 3, available at www.ohchr.org/Documents ProfessionalInterest/crc.pdf (last visited Nov. 11, 2015), ratified by all States apart from the U.S., Somalia and South Sudan. 3. Rhona Schuz, The Dangers of Children's Rights' Discourse in the Political Arena: The Issue of Religious Male Circumcision as a Test Case, 21 CARDOZO JOURNAL OF LAWAND GENDER 347 (2015). 4. Res. 2076, Freedom of Religion and Living Together (2015), Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe, available at assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en. asp?fileid=22199&lang=en (last visited Nov. 11, 2015). 5. The Committee of Ministers had previously expressed reservations about the resolution on the Right to Physical Integrity and decided that no further action should be taken in relation thereto, Comm. of Ministers, Children’s Right to Physical Integrity, Parliamentary Assembly Recommendation 2023 (2013), CM/AS(2014)Rec2023 final (Mar. 21, 2014), available at wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=2173161&Site=C M&BackColorInternet=C3C3C3&BackColorIntranet=EDB 021&BackColorLogged=F5D383 (last visited Nov. 11, 2015). 6. The arguments presented are equally applicable to ritual male circumcision carried out by Muslims. It has been suggested that anti-circumcision initiatives in Scandinavia are connected to Muslim migration, Johanna Schiratzki, Banning God’s Law in the Name of the Holy Body – The Nordic Position on Ritual Male Circumcision, 5 FAM. IN L. 35 (2009), at 37-40 and 47. 7. For discussion of circumcision in Islam, see Mesut Yavuz, Turkay Demir & Burak Dogangun, The Effect of Circumcision on the Mental Health of Children: A Review, 23 TURK. J. OF PSYCHIATRY 1 (2012).
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