Being Born is not Enough

An important question concerning the delicate theme of the Argentinean desaparecidos, which has to be discussed, is the issue of the stolen babies. There are a big number of the 30.000 victims of Videlas regime, who are actually living disappeared, in the sense that they are ignorant of the link between the assassination of their parents or of their own abduction. These are children born during the captivity of the mothers, who were abducted while pregnant, or are even consequences of the militaries rape. Kidnapped women gave birth to their babies blindfolded and with their arms and legs tied, without any respect for their dignity and health. To save the children the women had in their wombs, they were tortured with discharges of electricity only in the legs, because the babies were stolen and given in adoption to people, who better deserved them, loyal to the regime and who could grow them in accordance with the principles of the dictatorship. After birth, mothers were tortured, raped or even killed. the Declaration is infringed, since biological parents are deprived of the right to found a family through a marriage and the birth of a child. Related to the family issue, section 10 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights concerns the right of a family to the widest possible protection and assistance, which is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and the duty to accord a special protection to mothers and children. Obviously a large breach of the Covenant is carried out by the regime, which not only denied every kind of assistance to the pregnant or in labour women, but they even tortured them and robbed them of their babies. Being born is not enough and to exist as a person in front of the law you need a name, a nationality, an identity. The inalienable right to an identity is discussed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (ratified by the General Assembly in 1989) and, in particular, in section 7 is stated, that the child has to be immediately registered after birth and has the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents. Moreover, the following section of the Convention asserts the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference. The police had the power to hamper the legal registration of the child after birth, changing the name of parents and of the baby, to give him or her to a different family and touching another point of the Convention: section 11, which deals with the duty to combat the illicit transfer and non-return of children abroad, because all the children should born equally free, with the right to be grown by the natural parents, to live in their families with their original identity and environment. Taking children away from their biological families is not just ethically rude, but also

This article deals with the tragic question of the stolen babies and the violation of their rights. With the systematic disappearance of children, Videlas government violated, first of all, section one of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (ratified by United Nations in 1948), which affirms, that all human beings are born free and share equal dignity and rights. Therefore the illegal imprisonment of the mothers, the births in captivity and the forced estrangement of the babies from their parents are totally against this sacrosanct principle. Also section 16 of

Being Born is not Enough

psychologically blunt, because the separation from a family is actually the estrangement from a whole environment, made by a culture, language, traditions and history, which are the nature of the family. Children dont choose to live in a way or in another, they dont choose how to be grown and dont choose to be subversive or loyal to a regime; their parents decide on these questions for them. But now these grown up sons and daughters are indeed living disappeared and can choose to look for their biological mothers or grandparents. There are 500 stolen babies and only 80 were found and the Argentinean author Elsa Osorio, in her book A veinte aos, Luz, describes the meaning of the dramatic discovery of being children of desaparecidos. At least we have to help those, who are fighting everyday to reveal all the secrets of the tragic episodes of desaparecidos. In particular El Banco Nacional de Datos Genticos (BNDG), which was instituted in 1987 to pick up all the genetic data to identify the sons and daughters of disappeared people. All the progresses in finding them are also to be attributed to the perseverance, the strength and the courage of the Abuelas de Plaza the Mayo, who are still looking for their children and grandchildren. Annalisa Mancuso