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The National Council on Identity Policy Identity in International Law The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) was born of the struggles of one tenacious survivor of domestic violence and stalking. The NCIDP continues her work with the help of many. Read more about the NCIDP... ~ International law establishes that an individual's own identity belongs to that individual as an inherent human right, and that that entitlement to an individual's own identity is preserved by, and reserved to, that individual. It is the duty of the States to respect individuals' preservation and reservations of their own identity. To quote from binding (upon signatory nations) International law: in Article 8 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: "States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity". Although this identity right clause goes on with a sublcause to specifically enumerate protections of the child's right to preserve family relations, that protection of family relations is further qualified with the statement, "as recognized by law" [recognition of 'next of kin', kinship, or a recognized familial structure - generally this qualifier is construed so as to allow States to discriminate against gay and lesbian marriages and adoptions if those States establish specific laws of such discrimination, and herein on the Rights of the Child applied so as to allow discrimination against children of gays and lesbians where States specifically construct such discriminatory domestic laws; other U.N. declarations of human rights, however, condemn such discrimination separately]. The "right to preserve his or her identity", notably, reserves the child's identity right EXCLUSIVELY to the child. Thus, neither the States nor the communities nor the families have any entitlements whatsoever to the child's identity that a child in any way wishes to preserve his or her own identity against. The States are not, themselves, authorized to preserve the child's identity to their own liking, but instead are to respect the child's preservation of his or her own identity to his or her own liking.
This measure of the Convention on the Rights of the Child appears to fall somewhat short of the more thoroughly protected identity rights of individuals under U.S. law, but very generally tends toward the same direction, following the path of Common Law identity standards. That is, the individual's identity is self-determined and self-expressed in accordance with that individual's own personal beliefs and concepts of self; and, an individual's own identity cannot be dictated to, nor imposed upon them by the States or any other third parties, with the glaring potential exception of Article 8 that States [under Article 8 of this Convention] may be permitted to bar recognition of a child's familial bonds in certain cases. Under U.S. law, for example, the identity rights of an individual include the right to remain anonymous, and Article 8 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child appears to preserve the same right to children Internationally, protecting the child from any third party's false sense of entitlement to having such knowledge. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child reiterates and expands this self-determinacy, writing: "States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child" (Article 12); "The child shall have the right to freedom of expression" (Article 13); "States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" (Article 14); "No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation" (Article 16); "States Parties shall respect and ensure the rights set forth in the present Convention to each child within their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind, irrespective of the child's or his or her parent's or legal guardian's race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status" (Article 2); et al. All of these statements bear directly upon personal self-identities and expressions thereof, and collectively appear to directly prohibit any construction of the aforementioned Article 8 that might discriminate against the children or potential adoptees of gays and lesbians. Indeed, Article 2 appears to very specifically prohibit such sex discrimination.
In one recent (2009) and egregious example of a public entity appearing to behave in violent contravention of these tenets of International law and Internationally recognized human rights, and acting with a patently false sense of entitlement to a young victim's identity, ... GO HERE (Case Study: Violence at IAAF).
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