3 April 2009 - CRIN Children and Armed Conflict 129
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**NEWS IN BRIEF**
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SIERRA LEONE: Special Court convicts rebels of child recruitment and other crimes [news]
The Court's judgements are now available. Click here for the judgement on forced marriage, for the judgement on rebels accused of child recruitment, contact [email protected]
[FREETOWN, 25 February 2009] - A U.N.-backed court for Sierra Leone convicted three rebel chiefs on Wednesday of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the country's 1991-2002 civil war, including the first ever convictions for forced marriage.
The war saw bands of rebels including drug-crazed child soldiers kill, rape or chop the hands off innocent villagers in a conflict fuelled and financed by gems taken from its eastern diamond fields.
Issa Hassan Sesay, Morris Kallon, and Augustine Gbao, the most senior surviving commanders of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), were all found guilty of most, but not all, of the 18 individual counts against them. All had pleaded not guilty.
"These individual leaders were responsible for some of most serious crimes known to humankind," Chief Prosecutor Stephen Rapp said in a statement after the court handed down its verdict in Sierra Leone's coastal capital Freetown.
Sesay, Kallon and Gbao became the first people in the world to be convicted specifically of attacks on peacekeepers and of forced marriage, described as "inhumane acts" in one of four counts of sexual violence of which all three were found guilty.
"(The court) recognises the very deep and long lasting suffering inflicted upon women through conscription as 'bush wives' during the Sierra Leone conflict," said Rapp.
"It sends a message that may deter such attacks against the men and women who are protecting individuals, restoring security, and keeping the peace across the globe," he said.
All three were also convicted of recruiting child soldiers. Sesay and Kallon, convicted of a total of 16 out of 18 charges, and Gbao, found guilty on 14 counts, are expected to be sentenced in March.
RUF founder Foday Sankoh died in detention in 2003 while awaiting trial and his estranged deputy Sam Bockarie died the same year. The leaders of both the other major militias in the war also died or disappeared before they could be sentenced.
Warning
The Special Court, the first of its kind, was set up in 2002 to try those accused of the most serious crimes in a war that killed 50,000 people.
Wednesday's verdict was the third collective judgement it has handed down after members of two militia groups were convicted in 2007, and was the first judgement of members of the RUF, whose rebellion triggered the conflict.
"The RUF led a campaign of terror which tore apart the lives of countless ordinary Sierra Leoneans," said Corinne Dufka, West Africa researcher for U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.
"The countryside is dotted with villages which endured massacres, mutilations, rape and pillage on an alarming scale. Today's important verdicts have validated this suffering, and will no doubt serve as a warning to current day perpetrators the world over," she said.
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is accused of fomenting Sierra Leone's conflict during his own country's brutal 1989-2003 civil war in return for diamonds from Sierra Leone's east, is also on trial before the Special Court.
His trial is being held in The Hague due to fears that it may endanger regional stability if held in West Africa, meaning Wednesday's convictions are likely to be the last ones handed down by the Court's judges in Sierra Leone.
[Source: Reuters]
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=19727&flag=news
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GERMANY: Neo-Nazi youth group banned for trying to indoctrinate children [news]
[31 March 2009] - A neo-Nazi youth organisation that ran military-style camps to teach children as young as six that Jews are a threat to the nation has been outlawed by the German Government.
Amid growing fears that the far-Right is gaining ground in Germany, the Interior Ministry announced an immediate ban on Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend, or German Youth Faithful to the Homeland, for attempting to indoctrinate children with racial ideology.
Police carried out dawn raids on HDJ leaders’ homes in four states to seize the organisation’s assets and extremist materials.
Wolfgang Schäuble, the Interior Minister, said: “With today's ban, we are putting an end to the revolting activities of the HDJ. We will do everything in our power to protect our children and youth from these Pied Pipers.”
HDJ claimed to be a “youth group for environment, community and homeland” but its supposedly harmless camps featured tents with names such as “the Führer’s bunker.” There, children of primary school age and upwards would take part in military drills and be taught about elements of Nazi ideology, including the importance of pure blood and the continuation of the German race.
The Interior Ministry said today that the group’s ultimate aim was the creation of a Neo-Nazi elite.
Security services have been monitoring the HDJ for several years, but the prohibition of the group stemmed from raids last year that starkly demonstrated the true nature of its activities. In one raid last August, police searched a HDJ camp in a remote area of northeastern Germany and sent home 39 black-uniformed children aged 8 to 14.
“There was a regimented camp routine complete with flag-hoisting, in which behaviour and living conditions were exercised as in the time of National Socialism,” a police report on the raid said.
Far-right literature was seized, along with tea towels and song sheets emblazoned with swastikas and old maps showing prewar names and boundaries. In October, police searched the homes of several HDJ activists and found further evidence that the group was opposed to Germany’s democratic constitution and worshipped the Nazis.
It is illegal in Germany to display Nazi symbols or recite slogans from the Third Reich, although far-right groups have often found ways to circumvent the regulations.
HDJ, whose name and initials evoke the Nazis’ Hitler Youth (HJ) movement, was founded in 1990 and is thought to have about 400 members, although more children have passed through its camps. It has links to the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), and is believed to be the successor to the Wiking-Jugend (Viking Youth) oganisation that was banned in 1994.
As such, its small official membership belies its significant influence on the German neo-Nazi scene. The homes of its leaders in Berlin, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony and Saxony were searched this morning in raids timed to coincide with the ban.
Mr Schäuble said that today’s ban was an example of “decisiveness” in the fight against far-right extremism, but Gabriele Fograscher, a member of parliament for the centre-left Social Democratic Party, said that the move should have come sooner after last year’s raids.
“A faster analysis of the material confiscated and a quicker ban of the HDJ would have been a clearer signal against far-right groups,” she said. “The HDJ had a paramilitary and unconstitutional character and there were close ties and staff links with the National Democratic Party and the neo-Nazi scene.”
Parents and teachers needed to become more alert to the dangers of children drifting towards the far-Right, she said.
Concern has been growing in recent months that the German far-right scene is becoming more popular — and more dangerous — despite the financial crisis and political in-fighting that has rocked the National Democratic Party:
Crimes by the far-Right rose by 28 per cent to just under 14,000 in 2008. The number of violent crimes, including arson and assault, rose by 14.5 per cent compared with 2007.
A survey this month indicated that almost one in 20 boys aged 15 were members of a right-wing group or kameradschaft. In parts of the former communist east, that figure was up to one in eight, while almost 30 per cent of young people nationwide agreed with the statement “there are too many foreigners in Germany”.
More than 6,000 neo-Nazis marched in Dresden in February to mark the 64th anniversary of the city’s firebombing during World War Two — one of the biggest such demonstrations since German reunification.
[Source: The Times]
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=19997&flag=news
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OPT: Child rights situation analysis 2008 [publication]
[17 March 2009] - This situation analysis provides an overview of the extent to which Palestinian children living in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) were able to enjoy their rights to protection in 2008, from a structural and practical perspective.
The study focuses on the level of protection available to three particular target groups of children living in the oPt, in terms of laws, policies, mechanisms and practices. The target groups in question are children vulnerable to violence, neglect, abuse and exploitation in their homes and communities; children in conflict with the law under Palestinian Authority (PA) jurisdiction and children detained by Israel under its military order system.
For more information, contact:
Defence for Children International - Palestine Section
PO Box 55201
Jerusalem, Israel
Tel: +972 2 242 7530; Fax: +972 2 242 7018
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.dci-pal.org
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=19863
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USA: Review cases of Guantanamo detainees imprisoned as juveniles [news]
[26 March 2009] - The US Department of Justice should expedite the review and provide education and other rehabilitation assistance for five detainees at Guantanamo who have been held there since they were children, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. The detainees were brought to Guantanamo between the ages of 15 and 17, and have now been in detention there for more than six years.
“The United States has consistently flouted its international obligations on the treatment of children in detention,” said Jo Becker, children’s rights advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “Obama’s team should make these cases one of its first priorities.”
The five detainees are:
· Mohammed el Gharani – a Chadian who was brought to Guantanamo at the age of 15. Although a federal court ruled in January 2009 that the government’s evidence is too weak to justify el Gharani’s continued confinement, he remains in Guantanamo.
· Mohammad Jawad – an Afghan brought to Guantanamo at the age of 16 or 17, who has been charged with attempted murder by a military commission. He was reportedly subjected to torture and other abuse while in US custody, and has attempted suicide at least once.
· Omar Khadr – a Canadian brought to Guantanamo at the age of 15, who has been charged with murder by a military commission. Previously held in prolonged solitary confinement, he also reports having been subjected to torture and abuse.
· Mohammad Khan Tumani – a Syrian brought to Guantanamo at the age of 17, who has as reportedly subjected to physical and psychological abuse . He has not been charged with an offence.
· Fahd Abdullah Ahmed Ghazni – a Yemeni brought to Guantanamo at the age of 17. Although he was cleared by the US government to leave Guantanamo more than a year ago, he remains in detention.
To read the letter from Human Rights Watch to US Attorney General Eric Holder, visit:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/03/25/letter-attorney-general-holder-reg...
Further information
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=19425&flag=news
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CHILD SOLDIERS: Girl soldiers used up, then thrown away [news]
[16 March 2009] - To be a teenager and female is bad enough in the midst of a war zone, but it is often little better when the guns fall silent. Caught in a sort of limbo between childhood and adulthood, when it comes to peace and reconciliation, former girl combatants are often treated as invisible, advocates say.
Their plight is a "double tragedy," said Abiola Tilley-Gyabo of Plan International, an NGO dedicated to child development, during the ongoing two-week U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.
An estimated 200 million girls live in countries at risk of, in the midst, or emerging from conflicts.
"The most complex challenges faced by young women and girls are often encountered in the reintegration phase, a phase which has the least amount of funding and is socially very complex," Stephanie Ziebell, a former analyst on governance, peace and security issues at the U.N. Fund for Women (UNIFEM), told IPS.
During and after war, girls experience a larger spectrum of problems than boys do, ranging from physical attacks, sexual harassment, and exploitation and early marriages with commanders in armed forces, to more household responsibilities, unsafe work, health complications and early pregnancy.
It is often difficult to obtain accurate figures about girl combatants as a group, so their vulnerability and role in conflicts is overlooked.
"More often DDR programmes do not see that girls were combatants so they become invisible again and are left out," Sarah Hendriks, an advisor on gender equality at Plan International, told IPS.
Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reinsertion (DDR) programmes to help former fighters return to productive roles in their communities were originally designed for conventional armed forces.
Recent conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo have demonstrated the changing face of conflicts to irregular, non-state insurgent groups - and the widespread use of rape as a weapon of war.
Ziebell said that there have been improvements in the identification and inclusion of women associated with armed groups, but noted that "adolescent girls seem to be the population which is least often included in programming interventions."
Girls account for a third of the world's estimated 300,000 child soldiers but "because they are girls they have no status," said Tilley-Gyabo.
While war can offer self-esteem and power - through the barrel of a gun - most return home to nonexistent job or educational opportunities, advocates say.
What the girls do encounter is a spiral of social exclusion, both in the family and larger community, that is complicated further by HIV and AIDS, sexual violence, and young children resulting from rapes or forced marriages. Many succumb to depression and other psychological consequences resulting from post-conflict trauma and disillusionment.
"What is needed is a very concerted, strategic effort together with community leaders and those who have been empowered to promote girls rights in post-conflict areas," said Hendriks.
She cited the example of the Youth National Forum in Haiti as an "energetic" process that looked at inequalities and gender-based violence hand-in-hand with the president and prime minister of the country.
"In many different countries like Sierra Leone, Liberia, there is a lot of awareness rising... that the community needs to find community-based healing and reconciliation with young women in ways that make sense in a cultural context," Hendriks added.
Meanwhile, girls sometimes deliberately avoid reintegration programmes for fear of rejection and violence, which can occur in the demobilisation camps themselves.
"Measures that immediately demonstrate an end to impunity for gender-based crimes also boosts confidence and goes a long way to restore confidence in state authority and promote women’s leadership, as well as send a message that these kinds of crimes will no longer go unaccounted for," stressed Ziebell.
According to Plan International, from 1990 to 2003, girls were part of government, militia, paramilitary and/or armed opposition forces in 55 countries, and were involved in armed conflicts in 38 of these.
[Source: IPS]
Visit: http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=19836
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**NEWS IN BRIEF**
DRC: EU fails to reistate UN rights expert on Congo (Reuters, 30 March 2009)
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=19964&flag=news
Human Rights Council: Resolution on the Rights of the Child (March 2009)
http://www.crin.org/resources/infoDetail.asp?ID=19957&flag=report
NEW: CRIN's guide to child rights mechanisms (March 2009)
http://www.crin.org/resources/infodetail.asp?id=19952
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