CRINMAIL 23:
CRC Complaints Mechanism Toolkit

In this issue:

CRIN TOOLKIT: CRC Complaints Mechanism

A children’s rights complaints mechanism at the UN has been a long time in the making. More than 20 years have passed since the Convention on the rights of the Child (CRC) entered into force, and almost every country in the world has now formally accepted its duty to respect and uphold children’s international human rights. The Committee on the Rights of the Child has, from the very beginning, had the authority to review how countries have met their children’s rights obligations. Yet unlike other UN human rights conventions, the Committee was powerless to provide child victims with redress when governments breached their rights.

A complaints mechanism for the CRC will come into force with its tenth ratification. Though it is not clear when this will be, this month Bolivia became the fourth State to ratify the Protocol, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has finalised the Rules of Procedure that govern how communications can be filed. The time is right to consider how the procedure can be used to advance children’s rights. To this end, CRIN is launching a Toolkit designed to give advocates a better sense of the new complaints mechanism in the hope that they will be prepared and inspired to help children bring violations of their rights to international attention.

The Toolkit sets out the Who, What, When, Where and How of the CRC complaints mechanism. It is divided into three sections that correspond with the three ways that violations of children’s rights can be raised with the Committee: individual complaints, inquiries and inter-state communications.

Part I: Individual complaints

Individual complaints are the most direct form of complaint under the communications procedure, which allows for individuals, or groups of individuals to complain about a violation of their rights, either themselves or through their representatives. Filing a complaint with the CRC communications procedure gives child victims an opportunity to seek redress. Children face many barriers in accessing justice, and often have no way to bring violations, and the Committee can recognise the violations children have endured and provide recourse to a remedy where domestic courts fail.

Part II: Inquiries

Inquiries adopt a less judicial model, looking at serious or widespread violations of children’s rights across a country, rather than whether an individual’s rights have been violated. Inquiries will be initiated and carried out by the Committee on the basis of information submitted from a number of sources. The advantage of the inquiry process is that it allows for investigations into large scale abuses of children’s rights, but also that it allows for complaints that don’t directly involve a specific child. Inquiries also allow for greater anonymity for persons wishing to raise violations with the government responsible.

Part III: Inter-State communications

Inter-State communications allow States to lodge complaints against other governments that have failed to live up to their children’s rights obligations. This procedure offers the broadest scope to raise potential violations of children's rights: complaints need not identify individual child victims and they are not limited to serious or widespread rights violations. Inter-State communications also offer the greatest flexibility and simplicity in terms of review procedures, but have been little used by other Treaty Bodies, and risk being more about politics than children’s rights. This procedure can only be used against a government that has specifically given the Committee permission to do so.

Read more on these methods of complaints here.

Also in the Toolkit...

Annex I: a plain language explanation of the Optional Protocol

As well as the toolkit itself, CRIN is publishing an annotated version of the Optional Protocol with plain English explanations of the adopted text, links with relevant provisions of the CRC and examples of how children have used existing international communications procedures.

Download the annex here.

Annex II: a comparative guide to UN Treaty Body complaints procedures

To put the CRC complaints mechanism in the wider human rights context, CRIN has also produced a chart comparing all of the international communications procedures at the UN.

Download the comparison table here.

Further information:

• Read more about the campaign for a complaints mechanism here.

Back to top

CALL FOR INFORMATION: Creating non-violent juvenile justice systems

The International NGO Council on Violence Against Children is preparing a report on violence and the juvenile justice system. The report will aim to compare the current violent reality children face when they come into contact with the justice system, to a non-violent alternative; analysing outcomes of both, including recidivism, risks to public safety, monetary costs, among other features.

To develop the report, the Council is calling on organisations to share information on the following:

1. Examples of positive models of a non-violent justice system;

2. Studies and data on outcomes of both positive and negative existing justice systems, in terms of costs, recidivism, future violence, risks to public safety, psychological impact, etc.;

3. Relevant jurisprudence, including on legal frameworks and successful litigation against violence; and

4. Data on forms and incidence of violence in existing justice systems, specifically in the three following areas:

a. Violent sentencing:

- death penalty;

- life sentences with/without parole, indeterminate sentences, lengthy sentences;

- corporal punishment, including whipping, flogging, amputations, etc., and other cruel, inhuman or degrading sentences;

- violence resulting from legislation (e.g. risks to children detained for status or non-violent offences).

b. Violence in detention:

- solitary confinement;

- use of restraints;

- suicide, self-harm;

- peer violence;

- violence by staff;

- rape/sexual violence and harassment;

- lack of adequate health care, sanitation, and education;

- conditions in detention leading to violence, e.g. overcrowding, violation of privacy, lack of family contact, lack of recreational activities.

c. Violence throughout the judicial process:

- violence during apprehension/transport;

- violence during interrogation;

- violence in remand and during trial;

- denial of due process.

We would also welcome information regarding children subject to specific vulnerabilities, including with regards to health, mental health and learning disabilities.

Please send materials, references and comments to [email protected]. Whenever possible, submissions should be in English, but if English is not available, please send us materials in the original language with a short summary in English. The deadline for submissions is 20th April 2013. Please inform us clearly if any of the material you send, or the source of it, is confidential.

We will keep you informed of the work and ensure you receive an electronic copy of the final report.

Back to top

NEWS AND CASES

Inhuman sentencing in Saudi Arabia

A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a young man to be paralysed from the waist down in retribution for causing the paralysis of a friend when he was 14 years old. Unless Ali al-Khawahir pays 1m Saudi rivals (£177,000) in compensation, he faces surgery to have his spinal cord cut. This news comes just weeks after the execution of seven young men allegedly under the age of 18 when they were involved in several robberies in the country

Courts in Saudi Arabia regularly sentence people, including children, to forms of inhuman sentencing. In retribution cases, sentences have included tooth extraction, eye-gouging, amputation and death. Read more about the inhuman sentencing of children in Saudi Arabia here.

Solitary confinement in Sweden

Meanwhile in Sweden, criticism emerged in March of the practice of isolating children in detention. An increasing number of 15- to 17-year-olds are being detained and isolated in small cells for excessively long periods of time while they await trial, the country’s Ombudsman for Children has warned. Read more on the issue here.

Legal aid cuts take effect in the United Kingdom

£350 million of cuts to legal aid in the United Kingdom have entered into force this month, cuts that will reduce the legal advice available to people free of charge. A number of the reductions will have a particular effect on children: divorce, child custody, immigration, benefits and education are all areas of the law in which it will now be more difficult to obtain free legal advice and representation. Read more about the story here.

For more information on where to find advice on legal advice and representation for children and children’s rights organisations, see CRIN’s Legal Assistance Toolkit.

Children’s rights at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

The Inter-American Commission on Human rights concluded its 147th session at the end of March. Children’s rights featured in a number of hearings including on the following issues:

- children detained in adult prisons in the United States;

- sexual and reproductive rights in Central and South America;

- violence against indigenous women and girls in Canada and Central America;

- the rights of migrant children in the Americas; and

- the right of intersex children to be protected from unnecessary surgery.

Read the full children’s rights summary of the 147th session here and read more about the Inter-American court as a mechanism to address children’s rights here.

Court wranglings over reproductive healthcare in the Philippines

In the Philippines, the Supreme Court has halted the implementation of the country’s first reproductive health law. The law, enacted in December of last year, was expected to come into force at the end of March, but this will now be delayed until the court can consider challenges from faith-based groups that the law is unconstitutional. The complaint alleges that the Act violates the Constitution, including provisions recognising the sanctity of family life and the requirement of the State to “protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution.”

While welcoming the law, which has been 14 years in the making, youth leaders have questioned a provision which requires those under the age of 18 to present written parental consent before receiving reproductive health services, including contraceptives. While a member of the law’s drafting committee said children’s access to information on reproductive health would not be affected, the founder of local NGO, BALUTI asked, “What teen would ask their parents’ permission to get [reproductive health] services? That would be tantamount to admitting they are sexually active.” Read more here.

Back to top

REPORTS AND RESOURCES

This month CRIN is also highlighting some of the reports that have come our way on children in court:

Using the complaints procedure to CEDAW and the ICESCR

This CRINMAIL focuses on the complaints procedure to the CRC, but this is not the only international complaints mechanism open to children. ESCR-NET, in conjunction with IWRAW-Asia Pacific, have produced a new guide to pursuing women’s and girls' rights through the complaints mechanisms to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the International Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights. Read the full report here.

Juvenile offenders awaiting execution in Yemen

Fifteen young men and women have been executed in Yemen since 2007 for crimes they allegedly committed while under the age of 18. In March, Human Rights Watch published a report on the juvenile offenders awaiting execution in the country. Read more here.

Girls in the penal system

The Howard League for Penal Reform, in conjunction with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Women in the Penal System, has published the second of a series of papers outlining the findings of an inquiry into the treatment of girls in the United Kingdom’s penal system. Read the full report here.

Back to top