CRINmail 158:
In this issue:
The UN General Assembly’s Third Committee started its work on Tuesday 4 October, under the Chairmanship of Colombia. The Committee held detailed thematic discussions and interactive dialogues with States, special rapporteurs, independent experts, and chairs of working groups on a wide range of resolutions and human rights issues. Read the full list of resolutions and reports relating to the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee, including child specific documents.
Youth representatives participated in a two-day debate on social development, grappling with issues of inequality, unemployment and xenophobia that hamper young people’s advancement. Delegates called for greater access to quality education and better employment opportunities, with unemployment and underemployment often driving inequality. Other youth delegates reminded Member States that while education was a human right, 59 million children of primary school age remained out of school, many of them having been displaced by war and violence. The discussion also focused on the current refugee and migrant crisis and the failure to provide education to young refugees.
The Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) on Childrenand Armed Conflict stressed that States and the UN system are required to take urgent action to address the devastating impact of conflict on children, with the means and methods of warfare exacerbating the challenges of protecting them. She also explained that it was necessary to uphold due process and the rule of law in conflict situations. The General Assembly also heard from the SRSG on Violence against Children who noted with concern that the early implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) was not living up to the high expectations with regard to inclusivity and “leaving no child behind”.
The annual debate on promoting and protecting children's rights addressed a variety of topics including the migration crisis, forced marriage, forced labour and sexual slavery. Benyam Dawit Mezmur, Chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, noted how barriers to the full realisation of children’s rights included violence, poor health, justice and the migration crisis, noting that poverty was not only a challenge in low-income countries. Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography explained that childrenwho had been sold or engaged in forced labour were often isolated, distrusted police, feared retaliation and lacked documentation and needed child-sensitive access to justice and redress.
The discussion on children’s rights concluded with a discussion on the growing threat posed by humanitarian emergencies, in particular the current migrant and refugee crisis. A number of delegates addressed the situation of children living under occupation, including representatives from Georgia, Ukraine and Palestine. Concerns were also raised by some States about the political pressure that had compromised the independence of the Secretary-General’s 2016 report on Children and Armed Conflict (read about the decision of the UN Secretary-General (SG) to remove the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen from his annual blacklist of those who violate children’s rights in armed conflict following “undue pressure” from Saudi Arabia and its allies). In the general debate, nearly 50 speakers outlined policies and plans to end violence against children while many also stressed that migrant children must not face punitive measures solely based on their status.
The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran highlighted the issue of early and forced marriage and the institutionalisation by the laws, policies and practices of women and girls as “second class citizens”. The Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children presented her report specifically raising the issue of unaccompanied children from Afghanistan and Sudan in refugee camps in France and the threat of being illegally traded for sexual exploitation by people who had promised them passage to the UK.
The General Assembly elected, by secret ballot, 14 States to serve on the Human Rights Council, the UN body responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe. Brazil, Croatia, Egypt, Hungary, Iraq, Japan, Rwanda, Tunisia and United States were elected for a first term. China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United Kingdom were re-elected for an additional term. They will serve three-year terms beginning on 1 January 2017.
Members of the Council serve for a period of three years and are eligible for immediate re-election. They may serve up to two consecutive terms.
Saudi Arabia was reelected despite calls by rights groups to reject the candidacies of Russia and Saudi Arabia, due to Russia’s record in the conflict in Syria and the Saudi Arabian coalition’s attacks in Yemen. ‘The integrity and credibility of the Human Rights Council relies on its members' commitment to work to the highest standards of the respect of human rights. This should inform who States vote for,’ said Fabiana Pardi, International Service for Human Rights. ‘New and current members must also be held to account in accordance with their pledges.’
The new UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, has been appointed by a consensus resolution adopted by the General Assembly (GA), after an “historic process” of selection “guided by the principles of transparency and inclusivity”. Indeed, the process included for the first time in history public hearings with the GA where candidates presented their vision and responded to the questions fielded by the Member States, as well as live televised informal debates with the public.
Thanking the General Assembly for his appointment, Mr. Guterres said that the key priorities for his tenure would remain alleviating the suffering of vulnerable people, in particular refugees and those in conflict zones, and gender equality.
Mr. Guterres, aged 67, was Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from June 2005 to December 2015. He will become the world's top diplomat on 1 January 2017, and hold that post for the next five years.
Manfred Nowak has been appointed to lead the UN’s upcoming global study on children deprived of liberty. The study will carry out research into the situation of children who have been deprived of liberty in all settings, whether as part of the criminal justice system, on national security grounds, because of drug use, their physical or mental health needs or their immigration status. The study will also make recommendations on how States can realise the rights of children who are deprived of their liberty. Manfred Nowak is professor of international law and human rightsand a former UN Special Rapporteur on torture. The appointment comes after a lengthy build-up: the UN General Assembly first called for the study in December 2014 but the appointment of an expert to lead the process represents a huge leap forward in getting the process underway.
After weeks of strikes on Syria’s besieged city of Aleppo, civilians have still not received UN assistance. To make matters worse, the Security Council has failed yet again to adopt two resolutions to end the bloodshed.
In eastern parts of the city, 400 Syrians have been killed and close to 2,000 injured since 29 September. In a statement, UNICEF warned that between 23 and 28 September, at least 96 children had been killed while 223 were injured.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, describing the ongoing bombardment and siege of eastern Aleppo as “crimes of historic proportions”, urged the Security Council to “set aside rivalries and act as one, in accordance with international security and peace”.
The Committee on the Rights of the Child declared that the governments of France and the UK are falling seriously short of their children’s rightsobligations in dealing with children living in the Calais refugee camp. Despite their initial promises that the situation of unaccompanied childrenwould be their priority, political and other considerations have prevailed over the best interests of the child which have been completely disregarded, said the Committee. “Hundreds of children have been subjected to inhumane living conditions, left without adequate shelter, food, medical services and psychosocial support, and in some cases exposed to smugglers and traffickers.” Stressing that these failures were not isolated events, the Committee raised concerns about the fact that the immigration system overall was built on policies that were neither developed nor implemented with children’s rights in mind.
Speaking ahead of Intersex Awareness Day on 26 October, a group of UNand international human rights experts called for an urgent end to human rights violations against intersex children and adults.
Intersex infants, children and adolescents around the world are subjected to medically unnecessary surgeries, hormonal treatments and other procedures in an attempt to forcibly change their appearance to conform to societal expectations about female and male bodies. Profound negative impacts of these often irreversible procedures have been reported, including permanent infertility, incontinence, loss of sexual sensation, causing life-long pain and severe psychological suffering, including depression and shame linked to attempts to hide and erase intersex traits.
The group of experts called on States to urgently prohibit medically unnecessary surgery and procedures on intersex children and investigate human rights violations against intersex people, hold those found guilty of perpetrating such violations accountable and provide intersex people subjected to abuse with redress and compensation.
Some 300 million children in the world are living in areas with outdoor air so toxic – six or more times higher than international pollution guidelines – that it can cause serious health damage, including harming their developing brains, according to a new UNICEF report.
Using satellite imagery, the report shows that around two billion childrenlive in areas where outdoor air pollution, caused by factors such as vehicle emissions, heavy use of fossil fuels, dust and burning of waste, exceeds minimum air quality guidelines set by the World Health Organization (WHO). Children are more susceptible than adults to both indoor and outdoor air pollution as their lungs, brains and immune systems are still developing and their respiratory tracts are more permeable. The report comes ahead of the 22nd Conference of the Parties (COP 22) to the UNFramework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakesh, Morocco.
The UN has appointed its first ever Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI), Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn. Announcing the appointment, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Southeast Asia Office stated that: “in all regions of the world, there are reports of pervasive, violent abuse, hatred, harassment and discrimination affecting LGBT and intersex persons. There is an increasing need to raise awareness about SOGI, and to support governments to develop rights-sensitive legislation that promotes and protects the rights of LGBTI”. Muntarbhorn has previously served in a number of UN roles, on issues including the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, and on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WG) has called on the US to abolish the mandatory detention of migrants, especially asylum seekers, stressing that the practice is “against international law standards”. At the end of its first official visit to the country, the WG urged the authorities to ensure individual assessment for detention of people seeking asylum, including women, men and children. The WG urged the government to end the detention of families and children, including unaccompanied children, in the context of migration and make concrete efforts to explore alternatives to detention.
The international community is failing to eradicate malnutrition in all its forms, and the world is not on track to reach globally agreed nutrition targets, said the Special Rapporteur (SR) on the right to food. The expert warned that many countries are now not only confronted with under-nutrition, but also rising rates of obesity. The SR expressed concern at aggressive marketing strategies to promote sales of junk foods and unhealthy beverages, especially when they target children and untapped markets in developing nations.
The UN envoy for education called for an immediate investigation by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) into what he called a war crime in Syria – the latest attacks on a school compound in the western province of Idlib that left at least 20 pupils and teachers dead. The call was made by Gordon Brown, the Special Envoy for Global Education, in a press conference at UN Headquarters in New York, where he also announced the allocation of $15 million to children’s education in Syria by the Education Cannot Wait fund.
The SR on human rights and counterterrorism stated that “migrants and refugees fleeing from the devastating consequences of terrorist activity are entitled to protection, rather than being stigmatised as potential terrorists themselves”. He stressed that the detention of migrants and refugees should be a measure of last resort and comply with principles of necessity, legality and proportionality, stressing that the detention of children could not be justified.
The SR on internally displaced persons (IDPs), Chaloka Beyani, called on Afghanistan to intensify its efforts to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of IDPs as a deteriorating security situation leads to dire warnings of massive new displacement. Many IDPs lack ID cards which restricts their access to education, other services and justice.
UN expert Ikponwosa Ero called on the General Assembly to take urgent measures to put an end to the growing problem of violence and extreme discrimination against persons with albinism, victims of which are often children. The expert identified concrete steps in law, such as regulating the practice of witchcraft in all its forms, embarking on long term and sustained awareness raising as well as initiatives improving support to mothers of children with albinism.
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) held its 59th session from 19 September to 7 October. It reviewed seven States’ compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights:
Cyprus: The Committee expressed concern over the inadequate conditions of, and services provided at, reception centres for people seeking asylum, particularly for women and children; and the difficulties faced by childrenwith disabilities in participating in inclusive education owing to the insufficient level of reasonable accommodation provided to them.
Dominican Republic: The Committee expressed concern over the persistence of racial prejudice and discrimination against Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent and child labour in agriculture and the informal sector. The Committee was also concerned over the increasing number of teenage pregnancies, the high number of unsafe abortions involving girls between 12 and 18 years old, as well as the lack of adequate and accessible sexual and reproductive health care and education services.
Lebanon: The Committee expressed concern over statistics showing that most children experience violent “discipline” at home and in school; the declining quality of education in public schools; and the number of children, especially refugee children, who are not in school or have quit school owing to the insufficient capacity of the educational infrastructure, the lack of documentation, the pressure to work to support their families, the unfamiliar language or the pressure to join militias, among other reasons.
Philippines: The Committee expressed concern over the high incidence of trafficking in women and children, exacerbated by natural disasters and armed conflicts; and the fact that almost one fifth of children under five years of age are underweight and more than 30 percent are stunted. The Committee was also concerned that an estimated 1.5 million childrenbetween the age of five and 14 are engaged in child labour and that half of them are working in hazardous or dangerous conditions and are exposed to various forms of sexual and economic exploitation.
The Committee’s concluding observations for Costa Rica and Tunisia are not yet available in English.
The Committee on Migrant Workers held its 25th session from 29 August to 7 September. It reviewed four States’ compliance with the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families:
Nicaragua: The Committee expressed concern over the detention of children on the basis of their or their parents’ immigration status; the fact that child protection measures only cover children under the age of 14; and the lack of information on the welfare of children of Nicaraguan migrants in countries of destination and those remaining behind, in particular their vulnerability to violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation.
Sri Lanka: The Committee expressed concern over the fact that malpractice within the country’s recruitment system reportedly includes illegally recruiting children; that families with children may be detained in exceptional circumstances; and the high incidence among children of migrant workers remaining behind of disruption of education, neglect, abandonment, abuse and exploitation, including sexual abuse of girls, alcohol abuse, child labour in and outside the home, early marriage and trafficking.
The Committee's concluding observations for Honduras and Niger are not yet available in English.
Committee on Migrant Workers: 20 March for the review of Bangladesh, Jamaica, Nigeria.
Call for inputs on "Climate change and the enjoyment of child rights" - Deadline 31 December 2016.
In last month’s edition of this CRINmail, we wrote that “During the past ten years, 51 States introduced legislation to ban corporal punishment in all settings, including in the home, the latest States being France and Paraguay.” In reality only 50 States have abolished corporal punishment since Sweden became the first to prohibit the practice in all settings in 1979. France remains one of the many States still holding on to adults’ right to physically punish children.
We apologise for that false good news.
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Closing
Extreme poverty
The UN’s refusal to accept responsibility for the devastating cholera outbreak that has claimed more than 9,000 lives in Haiti has been branded a “disgrace” by the Special Rapporteur (SR) on extreme poverty. The SR, Philip Alston, said that flawed and unfounded legal advice provided by the UN lawyers was preventing it from accepting responsibility for the outbreak. “The UN’s explicit and unqualified denial of anything other than a moral responsibility is a disgrace,” Alston said. “If the UN bluntly refuses to hold itself accountable for human rights violations, it makes a mockery of its efforts to hold governments and others to account.”
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