In November of 1989 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (now ratified by all countries except the United States). The document, which rapidly became the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, lays out the rights of children (defined as anyone under the age of 18) and the duties that states have to protect these rights. The stated reality that children have inalienable human rights contrasts with older ideas of children being passive beings who need only to be cared for.