Original sentence: While the text of the Convention does not forbid corporal punishment, in 2006 the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child rendered an interpretation of Article 37(a) forbidding corporal punishment
Edited sentence: Although half its members are not lawyers, and only three of the present members appear to have any experience as jurists, the Committee on the Rights of the Child of its own volition decided in 2006, long after the Convention had been signed by member states and come into force in 1990, and without any public consultation or democratic input, to interpret Article 37 as meaning that any form of corporal punishment, even the mildest spanking, should be made a criminal offence.In line with this unilateral interpretation, the unelected Committee regularly takes it upon itself to instruct the democratic governments of sovereign member states to outlaw all corporal punishment of children, even including mild spanking by a child's own parents.It is not stated on the UN website whether or not this interpretation has anywhere been tested in an actual court of law, either at an international level or in any country governed by the rule of law.The text of the Convention does not at any point refer to corporal punishment, spanking, slapping, caning, strapping or smacking.This has led some observers to assume, incorrectly, that the Convention itself forbids corporal punishment, which is not the case