29 October 2008 - CRIN Children and Armed Conflict 124
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**NEWS IN BRIEF**
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RED HAND DAY CAMPAIGN 2009: One million hands against child soldiers [campaign]
Schoolchildren, children affected by armed conflict, youth, and community and civil society groups around the world are mobilising to send one million “red hands” to the United Nations in New York by early 2009. On February 12, 2009, the anniversary of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, children from all continents hope to present a portion of these “red hands” to the UN Secretary-General to emphasise the need for international action to end the use of child soldiers.
Background
The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers adopted the “red hand” symbol in 1998 as part of its worldwide campaign against the use of child soldiers. After the entry into force of the Optional Protocol on February 12, 2002, Coalition partners have used this day as “Red Hand” day, with many organising local events utilising the red hand to raise awareness about the child soldier issue.
In 2007, Coalition partners in Germany proposed a global campaign to collect one million red hands for presentation at the UN on February 12, 2009. The campaign encourages participants, particularly schoolchildren, to make hand prints with red ink on A4 paper, together with a personal message about their desire to end the use of child soldiers.
Students and other groups in Austria, Belgium, Canada, the DRC, Germany, Switzerland, Uganda, the United States, West Africa, and elsewhere have created and collected tens of thousands of red hands. In conflict-affected countries, former child soldiers are part of this effort. Examples of these events can be seen at www.redhandday.org.
Participating in the campaign is easy. The campaign asks for three simple actions:
1) Organise an event where participants make hand prints with red ink on A4 (or 8 ½ x 11) paper, together with a personal message about their desire to end the use of child soldiers;
2) Take photos or videos of your event and upload your photos to www.redhandday.org;
3) Send your red hands to one of the collection points on the attached flyer, or to “Red Hand Campaign” c/o HRW, 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor, NY, NY 10118.
For more information, contact:
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers
2th Floor, 9 Marshalsea Road, London, SE1 1EP, UK
Tel: + 44 20 7367 4110; Fax: + 44 20 7367 4129
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.child-soldiers.org
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=18724
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COLOMBIA: Protect country's 180,000 displaced children, orders Constitutional Court [news]
Colombia’s Constitutional Court has found serious deficiencies in the State's attention to displaced children and their families.
The court decided that, after analysing the situation of children for several months in a process which included public hearings, the response of the government “had been fragmented and disorganised and revealed a glaring lack of coordination.”
A girl displaced in Medellín told the Constitutional Court how she spent her days: “Sometimes there is nothing to eat and I keep sleeping so I can’t feel hungry”.
Other children who faced the same predicament in Cartagena wrote to the judges with requests: “I want to ask you to help us with food. We need books, notepads, uniforms and food because we are going to die of hunger, food for the malnourished children”. Another said: “If it isn’t too much trouble I would like to ask you for clothes, food and a house. I like food”.
Children (more than a million) make up 54 per cent of the country’s displaced population.
Judge Manuel José Cepeda presided over the findings with the participation of judges Rodrigo Escobar and Jaime Córdoba.
The court’s conclusion is that since a ruling was issued in 2004, which established that the problem of displacement had spun out of control, the State has failed to overcome the serious problems facing this population group. “This unconstitutional state of affairs persists today, and brings with it massive, systematic, deep and persistent violations of the fundamental rights of millions of people”, said the Court.
‘Insufficient attention’
“The response of the authorities to the situation of children and young people who have been displaced has been completely insufficient”, said the Court…”the response has been late and lacking in resources for displaced children.”
The Court drew attention to the fact that displaced children were at risk of being victims of crime, forcible recruitment by illegal groups. It said they were also more vulnerable to the effects of landmines, sexual abuse and to the “social control strategies of illegal armed groups operating in large parts of the country.”
After making its diagnosis, the Court ordered State ministries and other bodies to draft, within six months, a programme for attending to displaced children, with support from NGOs and the international community....
Projects must also be created to attend to displaced children in Cartagena, Arauca, Sincelejo, Quibdó, Tumaco, Buenaventura, Bucaramanga, Bogotá, Medellín, Policarpa (Nariño), Florencia (Caquetá) and San José del Guaviare, it said.
Protection to indigenous peoples
The Constitutional Court is preparing other decisions in the next few weeks in which it will order State bodies to protect all displaced persons in different ways, including indigenous persons, Afro-Colombians and displaced persons who have a disability…
[Source: eltiempo.com, translated by CRIN]
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=18831&flag=news
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UN SECURITY COUNCIL: Reform process to begin next month [news]
[NEW YORK, 12 October 2008] - The UN General Assembly's panel tasked with making recommendations for expanding the membership of the Security Council that would turn it into a more representative and effective body will meet on 17 November.
The Pan African News Agency (PANA) reports that the decision to hold the meeting was reported by UN General Assembly's President Miguel Brockmann, in a letter he sent to permanent representatives of Member States on Friday.
The president stated that the 192-member assembly's Open Ended Working Group (OEWG) on the issue would hold discussions before starting inter-governmental negotiations on 21 November.
PANA also learnt that Brockmann has appointed Afghanistan's UN Ambassador Zahir Tanin as his points man to hold consultations with member states on the issue.
A UN spokesman, Yves Sorokobi, told PANA that Tanin would chair the informal meeting of the General Assembly and of the working group in an effort to find a way to enlarge the council.
Sokorobi said that the assembly's president planned to pursue, aggressively, the democratisation of the council, which, he said, was top on his agenda on assuming the presidency of the general assembly early in September.
PANA recalls that before closing its 62nd session, the UN assembly decided to begin inter-governmental negotiations on reforming the 15-member council not later than 28 February, 2009...
It further agreed to "work in good faith, with mutual respect and in an open, inclusive and transparent manner, on the question of equitable representation and increase in the membership of the security council and other matters related to the Council, seeking a solution that can garner the widest possible political acceptance by the membership''.
The thorny issue of how to enlarge the 15-member UN Security Council to make it more representative and reflective of today's global realities has for years divided the UN membership.
Last year, a report by five "facilitators'' stated that most UN members support Council reform, but could not agree on how to bring it about.
In July 2005, the aspirants for permanent membership namely India, Brazil, Germany and Japan, called the Group of Four (G-4), proposed increasing the Council's membership from 15 to 25, with six new permanent seats without veto power and two for the African region as well as four non-permanent seats.
However, the Italy-Pakistan led Uniting for Consensus (UfC) group sought enlargement of the Council to 25 seats, with 10 new non-permanent members who would be elected for two-year terms, with the possibility of immediate re-election.
It also strongly opposes the induction of new permanent members and seeks expansion of the council only in the non-permanent category.
The African Union called for the Council to be enlarged to 26 seats, one more permanent seat than the G-4 proposal.
Its proposal for six new permanent seats was the same as the G-4's, except that it would give the new members veto privileges.
The Council has five permanent, veto-wielding members comprising UK, China, France, Russia and the US.
An additional 10 non-permanent members serve two-year terms.
[PANA]
Latest news: New nations to win two-year terms on the Security Council this year were: Turkey, Austria, Japan, Mexico and Uganda.
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=18671
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DR CONGO: Alarm raised over escalation in fighting [news]
[NAIROBI, 29 October 2008]- The international aid agency Oxfam said on Wednesday that the fresh fighting in eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) has displaced tens of thousands more people from their homes.
Fighting resumed in North Kivu province of DR Congo on Saturday evening between government forces (FARDC) and the rebels known as the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), led by former general Laurent Nkunda.
"The road to Goma town is a throng of men, women and children desperately searching for refuge in the town's crowded camps. Many people have been forced to sleep out in the open as they cannot find shelter," said Juliette Prodhan, head of Oxfam in DR Congo.
"The numbers fleeing are staggering. People urgently need our help. And yet it doesn't look like the fighting is over, so the likelihood is that more people will be fleeing in the coming days."
The UN mission, MONUC, is intervening to thwart the CNDP's attempt to attack the province's capital Goma and other population centers, according to Alan Doss, the Secretary-General's Special Representative.
But Oxfam said that about 20,000 men, women and children fled from the Kibumba area, north of Goma on Monday and about 4,000 of these are currently camped on a makeshift site in Kibati, outside Goma town with very little humanitarian support.
According to the aid agency, an unknown number of people from villages north of Kibumba fled in the opposite direction towards Rutshuru.
Since August, some 200,000 people have been uprooted from their homes as fighting has surged between CNDP and government forces.
As well as responding to immediate humanitarian needs, Oxfam International is calling on diplomats and foreign ministers to apply urgent pressure to stop the crisis from escalating still further.
Oxfam said over 15,000 more people have arrived at the already overstretched camps outside Goma in the past two months.
Oxfam said it is supplying clean water and sanitation to the camps around the Goma to minimise the spread of disease and has been scaling up its response to deal with the new influx.
It is also developing a plan to supply water and sanitation to a proposed new camp in the town, which will open if the situation continues to deteriorate.
[Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com]
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=18829&flag=news
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PHILIPPINES: Human rights curriculum for military revised [news]
[MANILA, October 2008] - The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) is revising its human rights curriculum for the military and police.
The move aims to make the curriculum more effective in promoting respect for human rights, particularly those of children.
"Amendments to the existing curriculum are needed because of developments in institutional and legal frameworks," said CHR Chairperson Leila de Lima.
She noted that the existing curriculum excludes the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This is a mechanism to protect the rights of children, especially those caught in armed conflict.
De Lima added that updating the curriculum will help the CHR to promote recognition of children as 'zones of peace.'
She expects the revision to further boost CHR's efforts in mainstreaming human rights education among armed groups and government agencies.
CHR's Child Rights Center (CRC) and its Education and Research Office are undertaking the revision which began this year.
"We'll enhance the curriculum, which is based on International Humanitarian Law, to help strengthen human rights protection nationwide," said CRC officer-in-charge and lawyer Brenda Canapi.
She emphasised the urgency of protecting the rights of children in conflict with the law, noting many continue to be detained with adult prisoners in cramped jails that lack sleeping and other basic facilities.
"Detaining children violates their rights as they must be placed in separate youth homes which provide adequate food, basic facilities and learning programmes so they don't miss out on school, " she said.
The Republic Act 9344, the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006, defines children in conflict with the law as being under 18 years old and who are either suspected or accused as having committed offences under Philippine laws...
[Source: news.balita.ph]
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=18830&flag=news
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OPT: Siege and mental health [book]
This book contains papers submitted to the international conference "Siege and Mental Health, Bridges Vs Walls," organised by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme in cooperation with the World Health Organisation, and held in Gaza from 27- 28 October 2008.
Papers on the theme of Women, Children and Family Under Siege include:
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Trauma, PTSD, Mental Health, and Resilience as mediator factor in Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip
Dr. Abdel Aziz Thabet
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Grieving the Catastrophe: Coming to terms with the American Shadow in Palestine
Dr. Bill Slaughter, Harvard Medical School – USA
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Listening to Children Under Siege
Dr. Elsa First, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; faculty, Trauma Specialisation
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Walls within walls: Intersections between state, political and domestic violence
Erica Burman, Khatidja Chantler and Nadia Siddiqui, Department of Psychology and Social Change, Manchester
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The Impact of the Siege on the Palestinian girls: Listening to the Girls of Qurtoba School
Saida Affouneh, PhD, Educational Consultant, Birzeit University, Palestine
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Psychological and Social Adjustment among Deaf Children under Siege
Naim Abdel Hadi Kabaga & Bassem Abdel Rahman Koraz
Extended summaries of the papers are available at: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=18781&flag=report
For more information, contact:
Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP)
P.O. Box: 1049 Gaza City, oPt
Tel: +972-8-2825700/10, 2824073
Fax: +972-8-2824072
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.gcmhp.net/
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=18781&flag=report
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**NEWS IN BRIEF**
Pakistan: 'US Missiles' hit school (BBC, 24 October 2008)
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=18792&flag=news
OPT: Report on the drastic consequences of Gaza Siege (The Popular Committee against Siege)
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=18776&flag=report
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