23 Winter 2015-2016 Summary The conclusion reached by the PACE Resolution on the Right to Physical Integrity71 and other anti-circumcision activists that brit milah is a violation of a child's rights is based on a misconceived and selective approach to the doctrine of children's rights, which results in misrepresentation of the true interests of children. The claim of violation of physical integrity ignores the benefits to the child of brit milah and the claim of breach of autonomy fails to take into account that most Jewish boys would, as adults, wish to have been circumcised. Similarly, the opponents of ritual circumcision seem to forget that children's rights are relative and that brit milah is likely to promote various rights of the child, including the child's right to identity, to freedom of religion and to the highest attainable standard of health care. Moreover, the anti-circumcision lobby ignores the CRC's fundamental message about the centrality of children and their perspectives in matters affecting them, which requires that matters affecting a child must be viewed through the child’s eyes. The claim that brit milah violates children's rights illustrates the dangers of viewing issues concerning children from a particular adult stance, without considering the future implications from the perspective of the children in question. Defining and interpreting children's rights in a way that imposes restrictions on children that they would not, as adults, wish to have had imposed upon them is to lose sight of the original rationale of treating children as independent rights holders. Thus, 71. Supra note 1. 72. See supra notes 40 and 41 and accompanying text. 73. Art. 24(3) of the CRC, which requires State Parties to “take all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices," was directed against Female Genital Mutilation and does not refer to religious practices; Baum, supra note 54 and Freeman, supra note 45, at 76. there is no need to protect children from an action which does not cause them real harm, to which both their parents consent, and of which they are likely to approve when they grow up. Indeed, such paternalistic protection is in itself a breach of their rights, especially where it results in prejudice to the child in later life, as would a ban on brit milah.72 Finally, it should be remembered that the CRC, like all legislative instruments, should be interpreted in light of the intentions of those who framed and adopted the instrument. If the CRC had intended to outlaw ritual male circumcision,73 it is inconceivable that Israel and the many Muslim countries in the world would have signed and ratified it. n Rhona Schuz is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center for the Rights of the Child and the Family at the Sha'arei Mishpat Law School, Academic Center for Law and Science, Israel; Adjunct Professor at Bar IlanUniversity Faculty of Law.
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