CRINmail 135
Children's Rights at the United Nations

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Human Rights Council session 28 - Day one round-up

This week CRIN is at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, reporting live from its 28th session with daily round-ups of each day’s discussions on children’s rights.

Ahead of the Council’s biggest day on children’s rights this Thursday - the annual day on the rights of the child - a number of UN independent experts with thematic mandates will be presenting their annual reports. While not all mandates focus on children’s rights, CRIN will be monitoring where children’s rights are discussed - or left out.

Monday's events at the Human Rights Council covered human rights defenders, torture, human rights and the environment, foreign debt, and the rights to food and adequate housing. The day also featured a number of side events concerning children’s rights, including on the death penalty. 

Human rights, the environment and foreign debt

Children are often overlooked when it comes to creating environmental policies, despite them being one of the most vulnerable groups to environmental harm, according to John Knox, Independent Expert on human rights and the environment. In relation to the work of environmental advocates, Mr Knox pointed out that States often wrongly consider rights violations of environmental human rights defenders as random incidents, noting there is “a pattern of marginalisation and harassment” against them. Once the floor was open to questions, and with regard to transnational corporations, one organisation raised the issue of whether States can be held accountable for environmental harm caused by private companies, and how these can be better regulated.

Also access the annual report of the Independent expert on the effects of foreign debt, Mr Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky. 

Right to food and adequate housing

Being able to seek judicial remedies for rights violations was one of the main focuses of the annual report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Ms Hilal Elver, who emphasised that economic, social and cultural rights are indeed justiciable. A case in point, Ms Elver notes in her report, was a strategic litigation case in Guatemala on the right to food of children suffering from chronic malnutrition and living in conditions of extreme poverty, in which a court found violations of the right to food, the right to life, the right to housing and the right to an adequate standard of living.

There was just one explicit mention of children’s rights in the annual report of the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Leilani Farha. Yet her report did cover issues that nonetheless affect children. Among these is the criminalisation of homeless people, which includes street children, by criminalising acts such as sitting, lying down or sleeping in public. NGO participants brought together access to housing and food as interrelated issues in the context of poverty and discrimination. They pointed out that indigenous peoples, who often face discrimination and violence which often leads to displacement, are particularly vulnerable to violations of the right to food and housing, including Iraqi Turks and Dalits in India.

Protection against torture

Even short periods of incarceration can “jeapordise a child’s cognitive development”, said Juan Mendez in the presentation of his annual report as Special Rapporteur on torture. Mr Mendez also noted that children who suffer inhumane treatment while detained in custody, endure greater emotional trauma than adult prisoners. Mr Mendez denounced how some States subject child offenders to the adult justice system and its heavier sentences, calling for an end to this practice, as well as for a global ban on the death penalty and life imprisonment in all its forms. In his report, Mr Mendez also criticised the imposition of detention and forced labour on children who use drugs, noting that these measures “are not a legitimate substitute” for therapeutic, psychological rehabilitative treatments that are given with a child’s full and informed consent. 

Human rights defenders

All attacks and threats against human rights defenders aim to “discredit, silence and eliminate” them. This is how Michel Forst, Special Rapporteur on human rights defender, began the presentation of his annual report. In the text, Mr Forst discussed the hundreds of complaints that he sent to States around the world, including just two on children's rights. These concerned the alleged discrimination in funding and retaliatory acts against the Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada, and the use of excessive force against protesters, including children, in the regional state of Oromia, Ethiopia. 

Children and the death penalty

Despite the global war on terror setting the campaign to end capital punishment, some States are introducing the punishment for simply being associated with terror organisations, said Juan Mendez, Special Rapporteur on torture, at a side event today on the death penalty. Co-organised by Penal Reform International and the Quaker United Nations Office, the event’s panel of speakers also discussed the effects on children of having a parent sentenced to death or executed, including pregnant women or those with small children. 

Tuesday at the Human Rights Council

Plenary sessions:

• Interactive dialogues with the Special Rapporteur on torture, and the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders (9:00 - 12:00);
• Interactive dialogues with the Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, and the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief (12:00 - 15:00);
• Annual interactive debate on the rights of persons with disabilities (15:00 - 18:00).

Side events:

Investing in prevention to end violence against children
Organiser: Working Group on Children and Violence
Time: 12:00 - 14:00
Venue: Room XXVII

Children deprived of liberty
Organiser: Defence for Children International (DCI)
Time: 13:30 - 15:00
Venue: Room XI

Human rights defenders and national security
Organiser: International Service for Human Rights
Time: 15:00 - 16:30
Venue: Room XI

Human rights in Syria: Women and children
Organiser: World Barua Organization
Time: 14:00 - 16:00
Venue: Room XXII

Education and children
Organiser: African Development Association
Time: 16:00 - 18:00
Venue: Room XXI

The other displaced minorities of Iraq
Organiser: Al Khoei Foundation
Time: 16:30 - 18:00
Venue: Room XXIV

IRONY OF THE DAY

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