My son's return order was overturned and the case was reprimanded based on a very bad interpretation of the UNCRC too.
In my case though, the problem was not so much those particular articles of the UNCRC, but rather the courts very jaundiced interpretation of it.
It is true though that, in almost all Hague cases, abductors argue that, based on the UNCRC, the foreign court must decide the child's "best interests" before returning the child, which pretty generally translates to having the foreign court make a custody decision.
This too though is a very poor interpretation of the UNCRC and not the reason I oppose it in the US.
The problem with the UNCRC is its empowerment of courts and administrative/government agencies to be the true parents of children while turning their actual parents into glorified baby sitters (it's bad enough that our sexist and biased family law system often already makes the government into the father/husband.)
The UNCRC largely removes the autonomy of parents to make decisions for their children. We actually have too much of that going on under current US laws already, but the website linked above speaks to that in much greater detail.
I have seen and read about too many "child professionals/experts" of all stripes (social workers, guardian ad litems, court psychologists, prosecutors, counselors and judges) making terrible decisions for children to believe for one second that they should have more authority over OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN than the children's own parents.
The UNCRC is very well intentioned and probably even does good things in many of the third world countries where it's been ratified, but I consider it an unnecessary and dangerous law for the US and an avenue through which the government can destroy traditional families altogether "for the sake of the children."
It's worth noting that every totalitarian state tries, and indeed needs, to destroy the autonmous power and influence exercised in society by families if it is to invade and control every aspect of it's citizens private lives.
As far as renouncing your citizenship, there are many within the US government and amongst the US population who care deeply about the issue and many more who are not yet aware of it.
The political calculus of the US State Dept. which deems abandoning our abducted children to be an acceptable level of collateral damage is not representative of America as a country or a people. By critizing America as a whole for one, admittedly very broken, aspect of its foreign policy you are making the same mistake that many foreign countries make in attacking left behind American parents as though we, ourselves, are responsible for other aspects of American foreign policy that they disagree with (such as America's history of interventionism in Latin America.)
