GENEVA
United National Regional Information Center
Today, a UN panel in Geneva has begun hearing a report by Vatican officials on the sexual abuse of thousands of children by Roman Catholic clergy.
The Holy See is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a legally binding instrument which commits it to protecting and nurturing the most vulnerable in society.
The Holy See ratified the convention in 1990 and submitted a first implementation report in 1994. However, it did not provide progress reports for almost ten years, and only submitted one in 2012 after receiving a storm of criticism following the revelations in 2010 of child sex abuse cases in Europe and beyond, the Associated Press has reported.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is expected to ask wide-ranging questions, forcing the Holy See to defend itself in public for the first time. It faces allegations that it enabled the sexual abuse of thousands of children by protecting paedophile priests at the expense of victims.
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