‘Children have a fundamental human right not to suffer ill-treatment in school’

Leila Sadat headshot
Leila Sadat, a law professor and founder of the Initiative on Gun Violence & Human Rights at Washington University in St. Louis, equates the U.S. government’s failure to prevent and reduce gun violence with violating children’s human rights. “America’s kids are not okay. As gun violence surges and politicians dither, school shootings are traumatizing a generation of youth,” Sadat wrote in a recent essay. “While only one manifestation of America’s gun violence crisis, school shootings are shocking in their ferocity, the senseless and random nature of the violence, and their impact upon millions of young, captive and vulnerable individuals.”