Human Rights for Dummies

In the wake of Norway's hearing in the UN Human Rights Council, human rights have almost become a buzzword.

What are human rights?

In school in Norway, you propably learned human rights  are something that concern Africa, and something Norway is brilliant with assisting, such as by drilling wells, to ensure people access to water.

Norway is criticized for inadequate training in human rights. Knowledge of one's rights acts as a protection against abuse and injustice.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written after World War II as a means of ensuring individual's inherent dignity and innate right to live without fear and distress, protected from abuse, as the world witnessed during World War II.
Many countries have undertaken to comply with these rights by signing a number of UN treaties and their optional protocols. Norway is one of the countries that has agreed to this international commitment.
The country has agreed among other things to attend to all residents having the opportunity to a dignified life, including all sorts of minorities, as well as to ensuring  people with special needs their right to the same opportunities as the rest of the population.

Human rights are written to strengthen individual dignity, liberty, right to privacy, individuality, the right to express one-self and develop freely and organize with like-minded, precisely to prevent abuse from authorities. Human rights are ment to protect people against abuse and interference, supported by the government, whose role is defined as a supporter and facilitator.

An example of human rights violations, is violation of privacy.

Many people in Norway today feel that their privacy has being violated by child welfare workers and police-officers arriving unannounced without a court order and without any crime being committed, forcing themselves into the victims' houses.
Families experience child welfare staff and supervisors peeks into their lockers, going through the contents, counting their family under-wear.
Families report that they are told by social service workers and supervisors, where family slippers are supposed to be placed, and how the kitchen towel should be folded, all under the threat of losing their children to state custody.
Families state they are critizeced for how they feed their children, and this being used as "evidence" for taking the child from the family.
Authorities are not permitted to violate citizens' privacy, which is a violation on Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The same article points out that no one shall be subjected to having their reputation tarnished, which victims of abuse by Norwegian authorities are increasingly experiencing. They are slandered with unfounded allegations of mental instability, lack of innate ability to care, low mental ability (IQ) and other serious attacks on their dignity. People also witness serious breaches on confidentiality by child welfare staff and health professionals.

A large number of people testify about collaboration between child welfare workers, county appeal board employees, attorneys and judges. Stacks of evidence show us that victims of authoritative power-abuse, lack independent legal protection.
Norway has undertaken to ensure legal protection by  independent judges and lawyers mentioned in Article 10 of the Universal Declaration, and the right to a public hearing. The meetings at the county appeal board as well as court proceedings, violate this article as no evidence other than the judge's own impairments, excist from the processes. We see close ties between judges, so-called experts and child welfare workers. The fact that many judges and lawyers belong to so-called secret societies, is also a fact that impair their independence. Nevertheless, nothing has been done about the extensive problem, which unfortunately has resulted in many false imprisonment and children arbitrarily taken into state custody, and statistics taken into account, actual deaths, many of them children.

Families wanting to ensure their children's rights and safeguarding outside of Norway's borders, report that they have been denied exit from the country as their passport have been rejected. Some have been illegally hunted by the police. Others have documents from the county appeal board that their children have been placed against the law in emergency homes to prevent the family from departing the country. Article 13 of the Universal Declaration protects people from such abuses, by pointing out the right to free movement. Authorities are not allowed to keep people in the country against their will -by taking their children.

Which brings us to the next point. Family. Family is defined as the foundation of society and  entitled to protection from the state. This is stated in Article 16 of the Declaration of Human Rights, and in Article 23 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. There are  reasons to believe that many who have experienced the ravages of Norwegian child welfare services, that we have seen to threaten children's and other family members' lives and health, will feel sick hearing the wording of the rights that have been denied their family.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child serves as guidelines for what is best for children, and stresses that children have the same rights to live free from fear and want, their dignity safeguarded, as adults.
Article 12 on the Convention ensures children's participation rights and their right to be heard and taken seriously, and the Convention's Articles 8 and 9 point out the family being children's main arena which it should not be separated from against their will, except by a decicion by competent authorities and court-order in cases where the child is prone to abuse.
As we regularly witness child welfare staff disrespecting national legislation and human rights, can we call them competent authorities?
To harm children and other family members is unfortunately included in their formal education (See Kari Killén's literature, the basis of Norwegian child welfare education). We also hear about child welfare managers and other employees who lack formal education in general.
Article 9 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, children have a right to maintain direct personal and regular contact with their parents, if it has been necessary with a re-location away from home. This article, among other parts of the Convention, are violated daily by Norwegian authorities.

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration ensures us freely to express ourselves and express our opinions, and choose our own artistic and political expression. Unfortunately we see a lot of people, adults and children, who try to express their experiences through social media or by participating in organized protests, indicating that they have been threatened not to disclose publicly what has been done to families. Many find that they get visitation time curtailed by standing up publicly about the abuse, or that the children are refused to see their families at all. This results in extensive damage done to the children. The threats come from employees at the social services (Barnevernet), supervisors, county appeal board employees, judges, lawyers, so-called experts, etc.

One might ask whether these are  systematic processes to break down the family members of the affected families.

There are several factors suggesting the claim.

Statistics show that the death rate is very high in families where the so called child welfare is involved. NIBR report from 2005 shows that one or two children in state custody die an unnatural death, weekly. http://www.nibr.no/filer/2005-12.pdf Since there has been a dramatic increase in placements of children into state custody, it is reasonable to assume that the death toll has risen accordingly.
Right now -not just one child, but several- are planning how to take their own lives, as a result of damage caused by child welfare workers, the police, lawyers, judges, so-called experts, foster employees, emergency employees ...

We must expect a plethora of unlisted figures that apply to placement into emergency -homes, unlisted foster-homes, placement in institutions, unlisted emergency homes, strengthened foster-homes...
Figures from the same report show dramaticly high suicide rates in families who have been victims of the processes stages by so-called social services. Several of the suicide victims are children.

Post-traumatic stress is a number of handicapping, unpleasant, sometimes unbearable symptoms, as experienced by many victims of abuse by child welfare staff, police, county appeal board employees, judges, etc. This is major damage that can be compared with war injuries.
Other problems that recur, are weakened immune system, auto-immune diseases, heart problems, anxiety, depression, nightmares, sweats and anhedonia. To live under constant elevated stress levels and intense fear, lowers demonstrably general health considerably and can be associated with serious health conditions such as cancer and heart attacks.
 

Attorney Sverre Kvilhaug also discusses separation injuries, as severe, in many cases, life-threatening and life-lasting damage to the body and psyche. These occur in young children separated from their parents.

Provably many children are illegally and forcefully separated from their families and placed into emergency "homes". When the the legistlation for such severe intervention in family life, is violated, we are talking about kidnapping. Nonetheless, it is documented that the practice is supported by county appeal boards and judges all over the country, to keep the child in state custody during a so-called investigation period.According to the definition, the practice seems to fall under the concept of torture, since family members, especially children, are being severely hurt while pressed for information, often irrelevent to assessing parenting skills.

The fact that the authorities inflict harm on the population, is serious, unacceptable, and gives a country a questionable status internationally.

Amnesty International defines torture as "a deliberate and premeditated attack on a person's psyche, body and dignity, by a public official or someone acting with governmental approval."

Torture is referred to in Article 5 of the Universal Declaration, the Torture Convention and it's optional protocols, also signed by Norway.

Article 3 of the Universal Declaration sums it all up:
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.