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Booklet

Your Rights & Duties as Parents

Dr. Georgia du Plessis

As parents, you have natural rights (and also duties) to raise your children. These are pre-political and pre-exist all governments, states and international organisations. And yet, we see these same international institutions, governments, and even civil society increasingly challenge and negate parental rights.
International law protects the parents’ position as having primary care over the child, a position that will naturally develop as the child grows. Contrary to this, the child is progressively promoted as autonomous from a very early point in his or her development, and, sometimes, parents are even perceived as a source of danger to the child.