May I bring in another few links (many of them immodestly, since they are links to my own writings), as well as an important point that has not been mentioned yet.
The links, illustrating that this is quite a serious and entrenched problem:
Christopher Booker:
Indians join Slovaks in protesting against UK child snatchers
27 October 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9637487/Indians-join-Slovaks-in-protesting-against-UK-child-snatchers.htmlBooker is a senior journalist/writer for The Telegraph, and has written extensively on the CPS atrocities taking place in Britain. You will find more articles of his on this question by googling his name plus some such words as "child snatching"; also, I have listed several of his articles here (where admittedly I have dealt rather harshly with him):
British press discovers the child 'protection' racket?
22 April 2012
http://www.mhskanland.net/page10/page130/page130.htmlJust now:
Jan Simonsen:
Child protection case damages Norway's reputation in the Czech republic
28 November 2014
http://www.mhskanland.net/page10/page226/page226.htmlMarianne Haslev Skånland:
Norwegian CPS action against Russian families - what is the truth?
26 November 2014
http://www.mhskanland.net/page10/page224/page224.html– Russia is alarmed at Norwegian child protection (CPS)
15 November 2014
http://www.mhskanland.net/page10/page220/page220.html**
The argument I think highly relevant is this:
The right of children to be with their own parents is as much the children's right as the parents' right. We hear almost exclusively from the parents of the injured and destroyed families, because they have a voice, while the children are mostly unable to stand up and be heard. But that does not mean that they do not suffer. Here is what Polish film-maker Roman Polanski had to say about life during the war, when he was a child:
"The strength that helped [my father] to survive is that he wanted to see me. He knew he had a child outside. …. I was a kid and I wanted to live; I wanted to see my parents. Among all possible type of suffering the greatest was the separation from the parents. I think for the child this is the saddest and most tragic – I would say – thing. Lack of comfort, hunger, whatever – it's absolutely secondary. But longing to see my father walking in the snow towards me, that was the real sad thing. Wanting to see my mother, who was taken the first."
The quotation is from the extra material on the dvd of "The Pianist":
http://www.mhskanland.net/page120/page187/page187.htmlArticle 8 in the European Convention of Human Rights is about the right to respect for one's private and family life. It makes clear that the right to enjoy one's family life is a MUTUAL right for parents and children. On this score the ECHR is quite a bit better than the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which to a greater extent talks of the child and his/her rights in isolation, and in downright opposition to the rights of parents.
The right to be together of course is overridden when the parents abuse the child or hinder it getting food, education, companionship of other children, and so on. But basically: The feelings of love that parents have for their children is not in opposition to the rights of the children, they are the same: the right to be together. Perhaps somebody might find something useful here?:
Is biological kinship irrelevant for the life of human beings?
11 March 2012
http://www.mhskanland.net/page62/page123/page123.htmlAnyway, the mutual right to be together, considered in addition to the sufferings of a child (who is even more helpless) taken from its parents without compelling, protective reason, means that we should not in such cases ask so much: "Does this parent deserve to keep his/her child?", we should ask: "Does this child deserve to be deprived of its parent(s)?" All parents are imperfect, but they are the only parents that child has, and the love a child has for its parents springs from the most valuable sides of nature.
Marianne Haslev Skånland, Oslo