Dr. Sandie Morgan looks back on episode #208: The Intersection of Children’s Rights and Combating Human Trafficking, with Rabbi Diana Gerson.

Rabbi Diana Gerson

Rabbi Diana Gerson is the associate executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis. She has been a leading advocate with the New York Board of Rabbis role in confronting family violence, sexual abuse, and the exploitation of children by reaching across faith communities. Rabbi Gerson has developed programs for the New York City’s mayor’s office to combat domestic violence and has provided prevention education to thousands of community leaders and clergy, whose roles she considers critical to ending sexual exploitation and all forms of violence against children. In addition, she also serves on the international steering committee for the interfaith forum on child dignity in the digital world. She received her master’s degree and rabbinic ordination in 2001 from the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. Diana, we’re so glad to welcome you to the show.

Key Points

• One of the largest initiatives globally is the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was written and ratified by the United Nations in 1989. This is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the history of our global society, yet the only country who has not ratified this document to date is the United States.


• We need to be mindful of the images we share of our children, because they are susceptible to becoming child abuse material.


• The whole community, not just parents, has to be aware of the risks and the behaviors of people that might take advantage of their position. For every one adult that has training, at least ten children are safer in their communities.

Resources

• Episode #208


• Darkness to Light


• National Center for Missing and Exploited Children


• NetSmartz


• Cyber Tipline

Transcript

Sandra Morgan 0:14 Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan. This is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. This year’s Ensure Justice Conference focused on keeping our children safe online. What an important topic. We continued the theme right after the conference when we aired episode #315, with Susan Kennedy, also focused on cyber safety. All this really got me thinking about an older episode we aired, #208: The Intersection of Children’s Rights and Combating Human Trafficking, with Rabbi Diana Garrison. I thought this would be a good opportunity to reshare that episode since I think it ties in with what I’ve been thinking, and I hope you find it as thought provoking as I did. Here’s Dave introducing our guest.

Dave [00:01:34 ] Rabbi Diana Gerson is the associate executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis. She has been a leading advocate with the New York Board of Rabbis role in confronting family violence, sexual abuse, and the exploitation of children by reaching across faith communities. Rabbi Gerson has developed programs for the New York City’s mayor’s office to combat domestic violence and has provided prevention education to thousands of community leaders and clergy, whose roles she considers critical to ending sexual exploitation and all forms of violence against children. In addition, she also serves on the international steering committee for the interfaith forum on child dignity in the digital world. She received her master’s degree and rabbinic ordination in 2001 from the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. Diana, we’re so glad to welcome you to the show.

Diana [00:02:27 ] Thank you so much for having me. You guys are doing incredibly important and critical work bringing people together for a common cause.

Sandie [00:02:35 ] And many of our listeners will remember Ernie Allen. And so big shout out to Ernie because he’s the one who introduced Diana and I. And that’s how she came to Vanguard to speak for our Priceless event this year. And it was such a great program and her message was right on target, and the response was incredible so welcome today.

Diana [00:03:02 ] Thank you so much for having me. And absolutely, Ernie Allen always brings the best people together, he’s really one of the great connectors.

Sandie [00:03:11 ] So, talking about connections. Let’s talk a little bit about how our work intersects, my work on human trafficking and your work on children’s rights. What do you think are the most common denominators there?

Diana [00:03:26 ] Well, we’re talking about vulnerable populations, Sandie. Wherever we look there are vulnerable people amongst us, whether they understand that or not, whether they identify as bad or not. And it’s our job really to create safe spaces and opportunities for prevention, and effective responsible response, as well as collaboration.

Sandie [00:03:50 ] So, one of the big initiatives globally is the Convention on Children’s Rights, right?

Diana [00:03:58 ] Absolutely. Celebrating its 30th anniversary this November 20th.

Sandie [00:04:03 ] Do you want to kind of break that down for people who haven’t heard of that before? What is it? What’s its purpose? How does it help our initiative?

Diana [00:04:11 ] So, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is written and ratified by the United Nations voted on and by the United Nations November 20th of 1989, if you can remember back that far. And it brought together all the countries of the world and was saying that children’s rights are human rights, and we need to do our utmost to protect children because they are vulnerable, and they have no effective voice in government. After all, a five-year-old isn’t going to be able to reach their elected officials or their leader and say, “hey, someone’s got to protect me over here.” And so, it’s set forth a number of policies and protocols for governments to basically set a bar to protect children within community. And it really was a remarkable day, as it went around the world and it is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in the history of our global society.

Sandie [00:04:49 ] I did not know that. Wow.

Diana [00:04:50 ] Yes. There’s only one country who has not ratified this document to date.

Sandie [00:04:55 ] Wow.

Diana [00:04:55 ] And that’s the United States, very frustrating.

Sandie [00:05:17 ] We really need to investigate what that is all about.

Diana [00:05:22 ] Well, I’ve had many many conversations with children’s rights experts and legal experts, and I have heard all kinds of reasons thrown around as to why the Convention on the Rights of the Child has not been ratified by the United States. It was signed at the time, by the president, but it was never ratified by Congress. And while there’s always a movement afoot to try and get it through Senate, which is where we ratify all international treaties that are binding, we don’t seem to have any political will to get this done at this point and not quite sure why but I can posit many guesses, which makes me a great you know guesstimater but not a real critical answer to the question. But it doesn’t mean that we don’t lack the opportunity to engage in its basic tenets. So, children’s rights are universal, and we have to think about how we do protect children, whether we’re protecting children from exploitation online, whether we’re protecting children from some type of a child abuse in the home and community, whether we’re talking about the age of marriage in society. We just watched in India, they have just outlawed marriage for all children under the age of 18. And even in the United States today, this is a slow movement which is going across state by state by state.

Sandie [00:06:46 ] I just spoke at a forum on child marriage, here in California, because it’s an initiative to follow suit here. At this particular point, only two states in the U.S. have outlawed marriage under the age of 18.

Diana [00:07:02 ] Exactly right. In fact, the first state was supposed to be New Jersey. And in fact, it was not. It passed in Trenton, and it was vetoed by then the governor. And it was interesting because he vetoed it under the understanding and the thinking that it put an undue burden on faith communities.

Diana [00:07:24 ] And as a result, Delaware was the first one to pass the law and the faith leaders of New Jersey descended upon Trenton and they said absolutely not. This doesn’t put an undue burden on us, this is us saying we want to protect our kids. And so, it really helped to flip the conversation and then New Jersey, they did pass it again in the next session and it did pass and was signed into law. New York State hasn’t had the same level of success, so I hope California really does.

Sandie [00:07:59 ] Me too.

Diana [00:08:00 ] I think it’s really important to protect their only childhood. And we know that for children who are married at a young age, there are so many risk factors for them both health